Guild Wars 2

John Smith: Ignore the naysayers – stay Laissez Faire. I’ve been in-world maybe three weeks (newb). I always liked the self-adjusting market in GW1, and I like it here. This is coming from a guy that took two weeks to build up 1.5 gold, so I am not a trader with a self-interest at stake.

Over-manipulation can only lead to more problems than we have now. Hmmm, this sounds familiar.

Regulations? Sounds like red commie talk to me.

I’d attribute the growth to a lack of people farming the areas that Engraved Totems drop in. Without an associated drop in demand – which probably won’t happen, since you need them to get crafting fairly high, which is the leveling method on later characters if you have a pile of money – the price would have to gradually increase.

No idea as to the sudden drop.

And as to why everyone is so hostile? Everyone’s suspicious that you’re somehow trying to make a ton of money by bringing attention to anything. Fairly frustrating when you just want to have a discussion, but there’s no good way to demonstrate that you aren’t.

Just ignore and keep going, assuming you actually want a discussion.

Wor Machien.9657:

Vick.6805:

Rather than removing the boulder trap, make it so that players cannot teleport past it, so that people actually have to learn how to do it, rather than relying on portal.

Really like this idea. Leave it in the game. Or make the boulders start rolling earlier before the Mesmer has a chance to get across far enough for a Blink. (I’m not hating on Mesmers, I have one myself)

It’s not hard to do at all. Practice and patience. Taught 3 CoF newbies to do it last night. Took a few minutes for them to understand everything and help pass it.

Brainstorming:
What if you changed the tunnel to have an ‘molten aura’ in which you die instantly from the heat? Before entering, you have to be transformed into a fire elemental to proceed without being harmed by the heat but the boulders can still kill you. Rather than transporting 3 flames to the end of the tunnel, you have to transport 3 elementals (yourselves) to the end and each stand on the pedestals to deactivate the flaming magic.

So…
-you can only survive in the tunnel while transformed and deactivating the transform while in the tunnel = instant death
-while transformed, you have no access to other skills
-nothing cheap, 3 people must reach the end to deactivate the trap

JK Arrow.7102:

TP warriors will most likely always earn more than farmers. As a guildy once told me, I don’t farm mobs, I farm farmers. I’m not sure anyone here is saying this can be changed completely but the compromise is making general PvE rewards feel like it is a close comparison.

Well I think you’re assuming that farming mobs and making money on the TP requires the same amount of work and skill, which I don’t believe is true. Farmers can (and many do) increase their profits be being smart about what items they farm and when and for how much they sell them. The reason there’s a gap in earnings is not because TP investing is inherently better, it’s that the folks involved in it that do make a lot of money put effort into researching the best way to get the most value, whether they’re purely working in buy/sell orders or whether they’re selling the items they found by farming.

JK Arrow.7102:

The TP creates a dependence on other players to farm needed items for you rather than allowing a player to get them themselves. Anet loves to use stacks of 250 of something for recipes rather than more reasonable amounts. It would be good from an individual player’s perspective if it were a more difficult decision to either farm something or buy the items rather than the current state of having to buy them.

So, you want folks to feel more rewarded for farming, but you want to reduce the market for the items they’re farming? I understand that lots of folks would rather find items than earn gold, but I think what you’re missing is that buying things on the TP is basically trading the stuff you find that you don’t want to someone that wants it, and getting what you want from someone else who found it and didn’t want it.

Currency is a good thing because it frees you from having to find and make everything yourself. You’re looking for armored scales, but oops, an exotic weapon drops. Are you just going to toss it in the bin, or are you going to sell it and buy some armored scales? That one weapon drop could represent 10 armored scales dropping from one mob, but only if you turn it into gold.

JK Arrow.7102:

What if somehow achievement points were used to purchase high end rewards?

I actually think this is in the works, but I don’t remember where I saw that so take it with a grain of salt.

I think this thread has some of the best discussion yet on the subject of wealth gap, PvE vs TP earnings, and reward structure going forward.

A few random thoughts I have after reading through this, sorry it isn’t more organized…

TP warriors will most likely always earn more than farmers. As a guildy once told me, I don’t farm mobs, I farm farmers. I’m not sure anyone here is saying this can be changed completely but the compromise is making general PvE rewards feel like it is a close comparison.

Minimum of 1 rare per world boss chests give the feeling that rewards are better. Even though rares have decreased in value since this was implemented by roughly 20-30% people enjoy seeing the rarer loot.

Some ideas for drop or item aquisition: Soulbind on use is acceptable. Accountbind on use or aquire is acceptable. Soulbind on aquire is not acceptable. This makes drops of item types not usable by your profession at least somewhat valuable for alts and alts need all the love they can get right now.

There will always be a “most efficient” run/speedclear/method for making money in PvE. Currently it is CoF P1. The main issue is that the most efficient run should not be substantially better than the next best option.

The TP creates a dependence on other players to farm needed items for you rather than allowing a player to get them themselves. Anet loves to use stacks of 250 of something for recipes rather than more reasonable amounts. It would be good from an individual player’s perspective if it were a more difficult decision to either farm something or buy the items rather than the current state of having to buy them.

I would like to see more PvE rewards mimic those of SAB. The ability to get a random drop or the same item via tradable tokens seems to be welcomed by many PvE players and may help with the feeling of accomplishment and reward.

And one last idea that I’m not sure I really like because we have more than enough currencies already…What is the one numeric value that players of all parts of the game (PvE, Wvw, etc.) use to compare themselves to others as well as against in game accomplisments? What if somehow achievement points were used to purchase high end rewards? I think I would be more in favor of it if fewer of the points came from daily and monthly rewards and a higher portion from in game activities but thought I would at least mention the idea.

Somebody is actually seeing those precursors drop that you’re so eager to turn over your life savings to get. Either they drop from the environment a lot more than ya’d think, or someone’s found the sweet spot to make a profit over the long haul for generating them via the forge.

It only takes a few “’nother 1000gs in to the toild soo thad 2000 now and no luck” signs posted around your gold mine to scare off the competition .

Versepelles.1972:

*Retailing reflects real world market mechanics, and involves some degree of risk
*Retailing may be able to help equalize supply and demand for some items; however, the bulk of the utility goes directly to the retailer
*Retailing does not add value to any item, and therefore the money made from such a transaction has little merit, other than perhaps acumen
*The profit made from Retailing an item comes directly at other players’ expenses
*There is no clearly defined line between watching market trends and purchasing materials/items which are intended for use when those items cost relatively less, and watching market trends in order to buy items relatively cheap for profit, other than intention
*Retailing is an easy way to make money for many players

tl;dr
What do you think about flipping?

Flipping or retailing is exactly the same activity as your local corner shop. You buy your product cheap from the suppliers (buy orders) and sell it cheaper than your competitors (sell orders).

Flipping is buying low and selling normal, anyone selling high isn’t doing it right.

Flipping is also entirely harmless, in fact it’s marginally helpful. To acquire items to flip you need to be paying the most for it, which benefits anyone selling. To sell those items you need to have the lowest price, which benefits anyone buying.

At no point is anyone hurt by flipping. I can only buy and sell at what people are willing to accept.

I’ve got some footage of a couple of dungeon runs I did with another Mantra Mesmer So expect double awesome Mantra action for one!

I’ll have to edit it to demonstrate the various examples of mantra usage in dungeons. So it might still be a couple of days till it’s ready and uploaded

Runeseeker.9304:

Great build Fay! Mantras have always looked pretty interesting to me, so I may have to give this a shot, when I can collect the gear!

I do have a slightly off-topic question though: Earlier you were discussing Mantra of Recovery, and I was wondering if it was worth using even with no traits into mantras, in comparison to our other heals?

I looked into the question in regards to healing on a mesmer in an earlier post:

Mantra of Recovery = 10.8k every 15 seconds (With RM trait) – 8k (Without RM trait)
Ether fest = 7.7k every 20 seconds (depended on whether you have 3 clones up or not)
Mirror = 4k every 15 seconds

I personally feel that Mantra of Recovery is the best Mesmer heal because even without the 3x mantra trait and Restorative Mantra trait you can still use the heals regardless of situation and you aren’t depended on having clones up and the cooldown is faster but the downside of course is the charge.

That said I feel that if you don’t us either the 3x mantra trait or Restorative mantra trait both Ether or Mantra are fine depending on what you prefer. Whether you prefer to charge or get clones up they’re both effective and good in different ways.

Good luck with trying out a mantra build I had some positive feedback so far from various mesmers that whispered me so it’s certainly worth a try if it intrigues you.

1 free key from story = 1 free fused :P

4 gold?

Find something that you can buy for 3 or 4 gold and sell for 5 or 6 gold. Rinse and repeat until you reach 40 gold.

Then find something worth 30-40 gold that you can sell for 50-60 gold. Rinse and repeat until you reach 400 gold.

Really the trick is putting in buy orders at the lowest reasonable price (not just one copper above, but instead possibly below the lowest buy order). And then selling in the same manner. If there is 1 sell order at 42g, 1 at 44g, one at 46g and twelve at 50g, you should be putting your sell order at 49g99s99c. That way when it sells out, you’re in before the hugh stack, but not losing out on an extra 1 or two gold.

Paying attention is really the key to making money. If you find something you can flip like that, keep doing it until it’s not profitable anymore.

I made 25 gold last night flipping items that buy for 4 gold and sell for 6. And I did it while playing the game. I just stopped every 30 minutes to use the trading post for 10-15 seconds.

StormageddonBK.9842:

Maybe some anti-gambling Ministers of Parliament could be made aware of this…

Out of curiousity, what’s your endgame on this? It won’t change the way the game opperates. At most you might get the game blocked in your region, and then nobody gets to play. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face…

Kurow.6973:

I have a feeling that they’d make a lot more money if these skins were straight up purchasable with gems like the wintersday skins were, especially considering these look better in the eyes of most people.

You think that? You really think that?

You think the people who have the real and complete data from previous skin releases, the people whose not theoretical livelyhood is on the line, the people who have undoubtedly spent dozens if not hundreds of man-hours considering alternative release schemes, the people who have to make the choice of how to proceed just… screwed up?

I don’t have the slightest doubt that doing it this way nets them more money, both this quarter and over the life of the game.

Gasoline.2570:

I farmed my kitten off to get the hunter, I got up to what it’s price was when I started, now it’s 200 more g than it was.

Looks like you need to get 200 more gold then but as a warning, there are lots of people doing the same thing you are to get it. Unless you farm better and faster than they do, consider yourself in the que to buy at ever rising prices until a) more hunters hit the market or 2) alternate ways to get it appear ingame.

You regard the TP as a store where you go and buy something for a fixed price. That’s not how it works. If you don’t like fluctuating prices and people taking advantage of you, don’t buy your precursor from the TP. You can’t complain about trying to get an item through a method where the price is understood to undergo extreme, significant changes. Your expectations are simply unrealistic. I’m not trolling. I’m simply being honest to someone who appears to lack an understanding in how the game works.

John Smith.4610:

A durable good is a good that isn’t destroyed on use, Weapon Skins are closer to luxury goods I believe.

But what’s the reasoning for not allowing them to be sold on the TP? Some people are willing to pay a premium for certainty, and prices on the TP will naturally adjust itself to supply (rarity) and demand (desirability of certain weapons).

Whenever there is a shift in the fundamentals of a market, there is a corresponding shift in the price levels in the market. Depending on the supply and demand dynamics of the market, there is a time lag over which the price shifts to its new point. Sometimes it happens very quickly – see the price spike of ecto after the announced change – but more often it happens slowly.

People speculating on items tends to drive the price to its new equilibrium faster.

On the whole this is a good thing. In the case of precursor prices being driven up to their actual long run value, yes, it means you had to get on the boat earlier to get your underpriced precursor. It also means people getting precursors now are able to sell them for their actual value. The fact that inefficiencies in the market are driven out so quickly is a good thing; items tend to be priced appropriately, and you can confidently sell and buy at listed values and expect to be getting a good deal.

John Smith.4610:

I tried it with larger time periods, but the quantities at each price point needed to be accounted for in a moving subtraction, it would take more time than I currently have.

Not surprising or even disapointing. Just looking at the data and pondering the meaning that can be derived.

Redscope.6215:

Another reason why putting out tradeable loot specific information ahead of time has great potential to damage the market.

I’m going to take slight umberage with your use of the word ‘damage’ in this context. Advance information causes ‘change’. If the market has a hit point bar, that bar is labeled “user confidence” and I’d argue damage is done to that in two primary ways: introducing large changes too often and failing to follow through on announced changes.

Telling us in advance causes change, and a little change keeps market use interesting and dynamic. Telling us and then not actually delivering on at least the letter and preferably the spirit too? That’s pretty ugly for any and every facet of the game. On the whole as consumers of entertainment we DEMAND the game change, and change constantly. Not providing change would actualy be a fatal deathblow.

Just think how practiced John Smith is going to be in strategically stirring things up 2 years from now .

Geikamir.6329:

I mean, buying out and reselling for higher.

Hmm. Perhaps, but I’m not fully sure if that really causes “higher” prices. In the past, there was considerable debate on whether the prices of Dawn/Dusk are “monopolized.” in the sense that people theoretically would buy it and re-list it for higher prices. John Smith provided data that pretty much tosses aside the notion that they can be “monopolized.”

I think the biggest lesson here is that due to the size of the economy and the playerbase, most prices you see on the TP, even the incredibly high ones, are dictated by market supply and demand. Removing the ability to buy out and re-list sell orders probably will have minimal impact on prices.

Geikamir.6329:

No flipping of precursors. The price would be much lower than it is right now.

How does flipping lead to higher prices?

I’d argue that the act of flipping increases the volume of transactions and helps keep the prices of the precursor stable and actually help buffer it against price spikes.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit, this isn’t getting us far. Instead let me ask this.
Here are the assumptions that I’m operating under for this question:
1. You feel that PvE and TP have difference levels of gold earning
2. You feel that PvE and TP should have the same level of gold earning

What would be your plan for implementing a reward system that would achieve what you desire, given the constraint that you may not get rid of the trading post?

I realized that when I read this, I automatically reformated it in my brain before answering it, and that I should probably share that process a little.

The question is really asked from inside the trading post looking out, by a hypothetical person who thinks in terms of gold earning as BEING the the game. I suggest that for people who like staying out in the virtual sun and stabbing things to death to take their loots, “gold earning” is not the end-all be-all of the game in the first place.

1. I feel that PvE and TP have different levels of gold earning – is True

But.

2. I feel that PvE and TP should have the same level of gold earning – is False

What I actually want is~

2. I feel that time spent in PvE and TP should have the similar rates of advancement towards endgame goals.

Most of these goals are cosmetic, so lets look at some of them.

Suppose I want Final Rest for my character – a rare drop skin. Even with timers to make it easier to only hunt the Shadow Beheamoth in periods when it’s likely to spawn and the explosion of Final Rest’s TP price due to speculation, it is still vastly easier to buy it than to acquire it from its one and only drop table. The drop rate revealed by one of your fellow Devs was nothing short of soul crushing for people who would like to earn one through sword swinging rather than coin purse swinging.

Suppose I want Infinite Light – a rare crafted skin. I AM the guy that goes out and farms high-level sparks/air elementals for hours at a time trying to lure Charged Cores out of the RNG. I run CoE when my dungeon-running friends are on. I do fractals all the time. In other words, I do what I’m supposed to (maximizing chances) to actually introduce charged cores/lodestones into the environment. And even with my ‘harvester-only’ relationship with the market as a money-making tool it is still roughly 2x faster for me to buy charged bits than to get them to drop (I have over 50 lodestones now, about 1/3 of them from drops).

Suppose I want a Legendary – the end product of a whole epic journey showing your mastery of all facets of the game (or some similar bit of grotesque over-hype by your director). I’m gathering T6 mats by hand because I’m in no great rush, but anyone here will tell us both that I should just make gold (run the hell out of CoF or AC or play the market) and buy them if time is at all a factor.

So, when I made my suggestions, most of them related to “the way we get paid” for Adventuring. Adventuring for coin is a sucker’s bet all it does is fatten you up to get fleeced at market. I want better chances to make progress towards my goals, not to gain the medium that I then MUST take to the market to move forward.

Until recently, once you turned 80, anything you might want to do, you can do faster by amassing gold, and that in turn incentivized amassing it quickly. I really do appreciate the introduction of the ascended gear tier, as outside of the triforge amulet it actually does decouple an endgame goal from Gold Acquisition. While I’m not pushing hard in fractals beyond the teens I can appreciate there are skins unique to those who do WHICH CANNOT BE BOUGHT. While I’m not in a big guild I can aprove of new guild weapon skins that reflect (and display) that sort of focus in someone’s play and cannot be bought. And eventually, as more of these endgame rewards move out of the trade post and demand getting a bit more virtual sun, I’ll even find strictly coin-based rewards like cultural armor a bit more charming.

But daaaayaam, I hope you guys re-work legendary acquistion for armor slots into something that can’t be massively side-stepped by a wad of gold.

Vol.5241:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Vol.5241:

This is really all silly.

Vol, I appreciate your point of view in many threads, but I implore you to read my previous two posts and consider that as a viable way to make playing in PvE more valuable and more in-line with the TP in terms of value for time investment. The key problem right now, I feel, is that there is a severe lack of suppliers to the economy because items have such low drop rates and there’s no reliability. Remember GW1 how you were guaranteed ecto and shards from the end chests of UW/FoW, respectively? That sort of thing is what is needed in GW2, just with cores/lodestones/rares and dungeon/fractals chests.

Increasing the value of the supplier role will encourage a lot of people to branch out, make PvE feel more rewarding without breaking the economy, and enable people to feel like they can make progress towards a goal by playing the game rather than playing the RNG. That is why it’s so valuable to us.

Even if you increase drop rates (which would more than likely result in a drop in price too, lowering your gold rate), a person who plays the TP will still come out on top.

I liken it to farmers. No matter what you do in game, whether you nerf Cof1 or even shelt/pen, there will always be that one activity or event in game that a farmer will take advantage of. Because there is no way to make a game that is unique but also have equal rewards for equal activities.

Same with the economy and drops. No matter what you do with the drop rate, there will always be inefficiencies and gaps in the outpost. People make money on the outpost because they are feeding off of player’s
-lack of awareness
-lack of patience

You can’t get rid of that because it’s human nature.

So let’s say we have a 1-item economy of crystal lodestones, and you have get a drop boost for them to drop it from 3g to 1g. Completely ignoring the fact that you probably don’t even make as much gold as before, there will still be people who will be buying/selling the lodes. And fluctuations throughout the day can be ‘exploited’ to make profit.

Increase the # of items in this economy and you further increase the inefficiencies of player’s in the market.

tldr:
People make money off the TP due to differences in buy/sell orders and player’s impatience (sell now or later?). Altering drop rates will do nothing.

you dont have to increase the drop rate of items, you need to make it specific.

right now, lets say 1000 onyx lodestones come into the game a day.
the supply is something like
20% from hunting sparks
45% from dungeon/boss chests
15% from mystic forge upgrades
15% from mystic forge attempts at mystic clover
5% somewhere else, i dunno

point is out of those sources only two of them are intentional, but now they have to compete with3 other sources in the market, which are people who may have absolutely no need or desire for said items.

if all methods of obtaining onyx lodestone were intentional, now you have a functioning market, and a more rewarding world. People spend time to create onyx lodestones because thats what they want to do, people who buy it are paying people who purposefully created item, based on how much they thing that time is worth. If onyx lodestone uncharachteristically valuable, more people start creating them and balance the price.

So lets say if you want to get onyx lodestone, you have to get lodestone hunter status from an npc, and go to the types of content where it drops, mines, fighting eles, and boss chests, now you only find the onyx type of lodestones. Now you are competing with other lodestone hunters, but not random drop man who just needs to offload items. items that are low in demand will be low in production, which will bring their price in line with the value of the time.

TP guys will still be the richest guys, but now they will have to pay people what that player thinks their time is worth, rather than what someone who didnt want the item at all thinks its worth. As well, if a price gets too high, a player can decide to obtain the item directly.

A key principle used by all successful entrepreneurs, traders and speculators is “affordable loss”. The principle of affordable loss means: invest only as much as you can afford to lose at the time and still stay in business. Stick to this principle as you try out different tactics for making money on the TP and you’ll benefit from the ones that work out for you and survive the ones that don’t.

Consider investing in some of the underpriced t6 mats, like venom sacs and totems.

Lodestones are not a good investment yet. There are two things that I think will happen with them

First, Arenanet will probably adjust the drop rate. They’ll probably include them in heavy moldy bags or make them a world-wide drop rather than from certain elementals. This will drop the price down.

Once that is fixed, they will eventually introduce more legendaries. This will increase the demand of lodestones. There are certain lodestones that are underpriced, so buy those ones.

I’m also thinking that Copper Doubloons are a good investment opportunity. Silver Doubloons are used for Juggernaut, so they could introduce a recipe that allows you to upconvert. It’s also a very safe investment. A stack of 250 copper doubloons costs about 3g.

Amun Ra.6435:

Desire? Luxuries? Dude…this is a game…it’s not real.

I’m sorry…..let me break out my thesaurus.

Instead of “desire”…..is “want” a word you can understand more easily?

And how about the phrase “expensive items” in place of “luxuries”?

It’s interesting to note that you ignored everything else I wrote in that post, just to point out that you disagree with my choice of words.

…….at least you read all the way to the end, so I thank you for that.

Wayfinder.8452:

Geotherma.2395:

On a side note, does anyone else think its funny that a dev or someone tosses a piece of information and people flock to it like a carrot on a stick lol Thus spending 5 pages on analyzing what they were given. Find a toy that they love when they are being fussy, when they are bored with that one find another. I just thought it was funny :P I enjoy reading though, always interesting stuff.

Maybe because there is little real communication with the community on these forums. When you’re hungry you’ll eat what you’re given.

Lol I guess. But people should be lucky they see anyone at all. Games like Aion just have community coordinators who have nothing to do with development. They get their information from some guy who knows a guy who met a guy who heard a rumor that “X” thing might happen soon. Whereas here you get devs, designers, community leads, mods, all sorts of people posting all over the forums and responding to people. And that is a great thing to see. Sometimes people don’t realize how nice something is unless they never had it or lose it. We get videos, feeds, live-streams, blogs, interviews up the wazoo. And I think it is great they take their time to respond when they have so much to do.

Price keeps Legendary…. Legendary. Skill at TP is just as valid as skill at adventuring.

John Smith.4610:

When considering changing the fees (it’s not a tax) there are side effects that we must think about. For example, if we shift how the fees function between instant sell and sell later how does that effect the demand for buy orders? Small, seemingly innocuous changes like this can have a profound impact on how players interact with the market and change the nature of what’s happening on the trading post. In a live game you need a really good reason to make changes like this, and a lot of work making sure you know EXACTLY what’s going to happen when you do.

I agree completely. It’s our job as players to view the game from our side to see if changes could be made to the current systems that would make them “better”. I’m not saying the idea I proposed has to be implemented (like many players do). All I ask is that you review the idea and determine its impact and whether or not it could be an improvement over the current system.

At least you’ve read the idea and understand it. Whether or not it gets implemented….that’s your job to determine. I didn’t make the game, nor do I believe you “owe me anything”. I love GW2 and will continue to play it….and continue to offer my suggestions for improving it.

Thank you for your response. I have complete faith in ArenaNet.

Without us (the players), you wouldn’t have a need to develop a game. Without you (the developer), we wouldn’t have a game to play.

Keep up the good work!!!!