Guild Wars 2

Firegoth.6427:

John Smith.4610:

It’s different people.

You don’t have the tools to check that.

An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field.
“How interesting,” observed the astronomer, “Scottish sheep are black!”
To which the physicist responded, “No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!”
The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, “In Scotland there exists at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black.”

Agent Smith is in a position to at least determine it’s different accounts. I’ve no doubt he has enough information from the security built into this game’s log in procedures to the strongly discredit the idea those acounts are owned by any single person not found in the cast of a John La Carrie thriller. That is probably a strong enough proof for most people to go farward.

Archer.6485:

lackofcheese.5617:

Cornering the market isn’t really possible when the mystic forge is still here and remains capable of spitting out legendary precursors.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Sure there’ll be more of them eventually, but they seem to be coming out at a far too slow rate. Has at least a hundred Dusks dropped so far? Good news for a hundred players. How long untill there’s a thousand? Still doesn’t help me because I’m not among the best and richest 1000 players.

I’m not even close to the richest 1% and in a 2 million playerbase that’s 20000 players.

So what happens to the guy that wants to make Twilight but there are a 100000 players who want it as well and are way richer than that guy? He’s going to have to wait for over 100000 Dusks to drop and be posted on the TP, that may as well take forever.

Or he can try his own luck with the mystic forge, which considering the current drop rate will probably take forever as well.

How can everyone complain about the DR being completely broken and overtuned but can’t accept the same reasoning for an overtuned RNG.

Hence the problem has little to do with cornering the market, and mostly lies in the low drop rates.

If Dusk has a 0.01% chance of coming out when you put 4 rares into the mystic forge, you would simply be an idiot to sell it for less than 400 gold or so, because that would be the average cost to make one.

I do agree that in the short term, it’s possible for some players to manipulate the market and profit off others, mostly due to the absence of information about the forge’s drop rates. It’s going to take a long time for prices to stabilize as players slowly realize how much it actually costs, on average, to make one at the Mystic Forge.

On the whole, though, I think the precursor greatswords were just wildly underpriced when they were at 60g. I wish I had been smart enough to realise that this was the case, but sadly I was not.

The random recipe is entirely sufficient to achieve a stable price in the long term, because the drop rate sets a well-defined price. The main issue right now is that no one actually knows what the drop rate is, and so no one knows what an appropriate
price is.

As we speak, players are continuing to throw rare greatswords into the forge by the thousands. The fact that we’re still not seeing many Dawns and Dusks as a result mostly serves to indicate that the drop rate is very low indeed. Granted, it may be the case that this is primarily because of recent changes by ArenaNet – if so, then a jump in price was to be expected anyway.

I suspect that Dawn/Dusk were simply very underpriced when they were selling below 100g, but the players selling them didn’t know any better for one of three reasons:
1) They ended up with a precursor through some kind of exploit, e.g. the 21 karma weapon exploit, or the lvl 65 rare exploit.
2) They got lucky and got one of these in their first few attempts.
3) They were gamblers and lost track of how much they’d actually spent trying to get a precursor.

In any of these cases, many such players would have failed to work out the true worth of those items, and so they sold them at prices that were too low.

Now, I’m not going to say that 250g is the right price for Dawn/Dusk – it may go up, or it may go down. However – although it could take a good long while – the price will stabilize eventually.

Considering that the other components for a legendary add up to something like 500g, it’s not that ridiculous for the price of the precursor to be comparable to this amount.

On an intuitive level, having the precursor make up only 1/6th of the price of what goes into the legendary just doesn’t make much sense to me.

No, there doesn’t need to be another way. And creating multitudes of threads stating the request in various forums won’t change that.

Random is a perfectly adequate method for determining the outcome of drop.

The sense of entitlement is unwarranted.

To the poster above who asked for a reward for effort, well, consider the literal chance at getting a precursor as your reward for effort. If you don’t put in the effort, you don’t get the chance at acquiring a precursor. Seems fair enough.

If prices are not stable, that is because the market has not reached equilibrium. They are climbing because, based on supply and demand, people are selling them for less than they are worth.

There is a really old, famous quote:
“Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay.”

If there is one copy of an item in a market, the value is not the mean or median or all the interested buyers’ offers, it is the maximum. However, once that item has been purchsed, that buyer is satisfied and the value of the next drops to the new maximum offer. Sellers, of course, speculate that there are buyers willing to pay more than the highest currently-known offer and try to sell for more. Inflation happens, especially in a world where the economy is still stabilizing and the population is changing at a termendous rate (0-2million in less than a month!)

As time goes on and the market matures and stabilizes, the price of supplied goods and the offers of demands for that good reach a mid-point. At this point, a stable price emerges. Until then, as long as prices are rising, you’re getting a good deal because they are being underpriced. If people stopped buying them, that would be an indication the price has risen above its value—until then, as long as people keep buying, they are being sold for fair market rate or less.

That is exotic precursors on the free market in a nutshell. If you want communism, where the total value of loot is split amongst the population evenly, so all may have the best, you had better find another game.

I acquired a Dusk a while back when I realized that prices were going to go sky high. It cost me around 120g. At that point I had around 200 hours played, nearly 100% explored and I took my time. My time at 80 was very limited because I enjoyed every vista, spent quite a bit of time in PvP, and explored jumping puzzles and many DEs.

If you want to get a legendary prerequisite exotic I suggest saving as hard and as fast as you can. Get a full magic find set (should be 160%+ when you are done with food). Farm cursed shore. You should be making 1-4 gold per hour the first hour you farm and slightly less after that. Sell your skill points – transmuting things like silver (7-8c) into gold (40-44c) at an average rate of 250>90 will net you in the area of 50-60 silver per skill point. I sold about 100 skill points this way while farming and saving for a legendary prereq and I am sure there are other good ways to make money off your skill points too.

Once you make some bank you can also buy/sell other legendary prereqs. The price of all of them (except the underwater ones) is climbing and the supply is very low relative to the demand. So place a buy order, then sell them for proffit. This is a great way to get that final push on your way to the more expensive legendary prereqs.

Hope this helps guys.

Volcane Crucio.4723:

Kaon.7192:

Mystic.5934:

that’s a notification program, not a bot. a bot would go one step further: take those notifications and place bids for you. I expect it’s that human bidding component that makes that notification program legal.

Yes but I think his point is, with the notifier, it is relatively easy for a human player to react upon his item being “uppercut” (it’s what I call it) almost immediately and uppercut the new price himself. So the phenomenon observed by OP can be easily attributed to the notifier since it’s a relatively popular program.

As I’ve pointed out before is it currently impossible to for any human player to relist 35-50 or so buy orders within the time frame this bot works on. So even if you have a program that notifies you, you simply wont be able to relist as fast as this bot does it.

Also, I feel like I’m reciting myself here, no human player would show this kind of systematic, bot like behaviour. ea; 10 at the time, same interval, 10 at all listings at the same time, no buy orders above 3s etc.

You don’t know if its several players or one player → response to “no human could outbid that fast” You also don’t know if he is -like you- making the circuit on his orders and simply outbids you while you make another bid.

I put up bos in the same pattern most of the time as well → response to systematic.

I also don’t bid over a certain limit where I know my profit will be too small to make it worthwhile. Don’t forget that this game shares a tp over all servers before you cry bot, simply because you get outbid on – probably not market niche-.

Don’t start a wichunt because other people play the same markets you do.

@ Arheundel:

Yes, “sky is falling” mentality. There are some wild speculations and conclusions being drawn in this thread. Switching to a different profession, etc? Over the comments in this video? Come on now…

There’s this whole sense of this being a house of cards and if someone sneezes in our direction it’s going to bring it all falling down because, well, WTF ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? If you do this… well, how can I play the class anymore!? Etc. When faced with the ever intimidating nerf bat, every class can be made out to be a house of cards.

I emphasized in my last post the importance of circumstance. You seemed to have offered up a lot of “in a vacuum” retorts. I’m not going to argue that thief burst dmg and stealth abuse builds are strong (I have a lv80 thief, I know), and I’m not going to argue that mesmer shatter builds don’t hurt, or that mesmer survival builds aren’t a serious kitten to kill. I know.

I also main a lvl 80, 0/10/0/30/30 d/d ele. I know why it’s my main, I know why I enjoy the class, I know why there is reference to skill cap, etc, when regarding the class. I also don’t want to see my class nerfed into oblivion. I’ve also dabbled with bunker staff and GC staff. Knowing these things, I can’t argue the efficiency of the ele vs other classes. Not necessarily “in a vacuum” or 1v1 situations or so many other circumstances we can consider. But in WvW, yeah I can see it being a bit “too efficient.” I can see why there would be attention drawn here, I don’t feel I need to explain why.

There just seems to be a fearmongering going on when it comes to these nerfs, like people realize their build has aspects that may be out of balance but covet them as they give them increased proficiency, and as such defend them rabidly. I personally found no reason to be alarmed after hearing what was said in the video. I also see no reason to be so scared about upcoming nerfs as they’ve been explained thus far. This however doesn’t exclude the fact that I’m skeptical for Anet to, lets say, stay “true” to their expressed position.

Too much “the sky is falling” mentality.

To put it simply, as stated previously, the SOTG discussion was very s/tPvP related. Coming from that, the question is field “What are you aiming to nerf?” The main theme was that the ele (particularly d/d bunker) has so many little things that come together to make them a little bit more efficient then they should be. That was basically it. He lists off boon duration, toughness, regen, mobility, etc.

Who is going to argue that that isn’t a relatively realistic perspective? It’s easy enough to see/experience. It comes down to a fundamental question of is it because they are better than they should be, or that other classes can’t counter them efficiently enough? Are they too strong, or are the rest too weak? There’s an ambiguous standard in play that requires definition for their to be balance, a standard that can only be truly explored and adjusted via real world application. Remember, the ele was brought up along with the ranger.

This sort of standard of balance is pliable to the circumstances of play. That is to say, balance in sPvP =/= PvE =/= WvW. If one fails to distinguish the circumstance and make appropriate adjustments, the system, the game, fails. In that sense, we as players cannot take this as a blanket remark, and must hope that the developers are able to make this distinction.

Again, this position from anet on this matter is ambiguous at best. Prior to the ele nerf statements in the video the dev was basically saying that they don’t want to destroy builds like the ranger and ele, just make them a little less efficient in some regards, and bring other classes up and give them option to counter, etc, and that they are being very careful with what they do in these regards. We can only hope there is some truth behind that.

I feel like it is a very valid point that the sheer amount of space involved in sPvP vs WvW seems to effect the elementalist balance more significantly than any of the other classes I’ve tried. With the class based around doing lots of little things to an area, if there is significantly more space to spread out into (WvW) then that class is not as dangerous as when space is limited and AoE can be stacked (PvP). While I agree that the Ele should be looked at to make other builds more viable and bunker less-omni, I would definitely advocate discretion on dev’s part to listen to heavily to either group of competitive gamers.

Perhaps a compromise could be in order within the power itself? I’m not a programmer, but what if there was a factor of how effective an ability is that is relative to the terrain itself? Perhaps in wide areas ele spells are 120% larger, or deal 120% more damage then currently, while in small and enclosed areas they are 80% of current? This would also effect the play-ability of ele PvE and in dungeons ofc but I think it could fix many of the problems therein as well.

Logun.5360:

John Smith.4610:

Think of the trading post as a whole. These restrictions aren’t made to inconvenience you.

I understand but there are no limits on the number of buy orders I can do, so why the limit on sale orders? I find it hard to believe that your hardware cannot support it so it must be that you want demand to out pace supply. So, are these restrictions here so you can get a better return on gems sales by driving gold prices higher?

Currently 1 gold piece costs $1.61 to buy through gems. If ArenaNet can create artificial demand by allowing purchases to be made faster than orders can be listed then the price will go up on all items. What may have cost 1 gold piece, now costs 2 gold pieces, which you now have to pay $3.22 for.

John, did I guess right?

In what crazy scenario do all goods manage to inflate to double their nominal value without the Gold/Gems exchange rate moving?

Prices for most items have stabilized on the TP, so obviously there’s not an issue with demand significantly outstripping supply like you’re trying to imply. Without having actual data from the game (which I presume Mr. Smith might have) I’d imagine that the vast majority of TP transactions are driven by players who are not affected by any post cap. It’s only speculators and market manipulators who ever manage to butt up against the cap.

The TP throughout the game’s short history has had a lot of technical issues. This is just a mechanism to alleviate a few of those problems.

I was watching a video today with some of the Devs, and they basically implied when they are thinking about rewards and item distribution for various incentives, they basically have to consult somebody like an econimist, or item/reward guys.

This got me thinking, it essentially means that these developers are essentially in charge of how rewards and item distribution, etc is handled.

So then the question is, what is your vision of a good balance? How do you approach that balance? Do you favor skill, rarity, effort, ingenuity etc in what decides reward.

My interpretation is that right now, the game is more focused on either effort, through time spent farming, or ingenuity in terms of capitilizing on the market. IE most of the economy of rewards are based on efficient production of high value items, and the ability to react to and anticipate trends.

also what do you feel is a good amount of energy that should be required to achieve low end, mid end and high end rewards, do you feel this should be extremely curved, or more linear in relation.

As for the other players this is for you too, what do you think would be some good reward metrics and what should be the major factors etc

Does anyone find the negativity in these forums, especially the ones about the Guild Wars 2 economy, daunting? Even so far as to notice certain players challenging developers who do not necessarily have to help or answer us.

This topic will be more focused around the concept of the gem market. Please, let us set aside the fact that Anet is making money off of it… Kormir forbid the developers make money off a game! I have seen hostility towards the ability to indirectly buy in-game gold by exchanging gems. Help me, and others reading this topic to understand the negative and positive effects the gem store has on the game and players.

This may already been discussed and if so please add the link.

John Smith.4610:

I’m attempting to educate individuals that goldsellers will put anything in their mails that they think makes it stick, what it is, is irrelevant.

I’m not on the forums that frequently, but I love seeing the patience you devs have for your players, right or wrong, fanatical or trolling. I’m an Army vet with one tour in Iraq and am probably the average age (26) of most of these “adults” who play your awesome game – I for one appreciate your service. Hats off to ya

Daeron.3608:

this certainly isn’t proof of anything

You’re entirely correct in your original post. There’s honestly nothing to discuss about gold sellers claiming they have control of the market.

Daeron.3608:

After all, don’t we all agree that there is something wrong with the current precursor system? Anet’s decision to figure out alternative methods speaks volumes.

No we do not agree. The system is working as it is. The precursor market is not being monopolized, and there are still plenty of buyers willing to the price that their rarity (rightly) demands.

Anet’s decision to assign one designer, and no devs, to start brainstorming the idea on a system they’re thinking of implementing MONTHs down the road also speaks volumes about how much of a priority they see this.

We’ll see though. We do not know if Anet is happy with the rarity of precursors in the game currently. It’s very possible that they will change it, for better or worse. But for the rarity of precursors we see right now, the price is justified, and the amount of transactions that occur daily backs this up.

Daeron.3608:

John Smith.4610:

That comment wasn’t sarcastic. This thread is evidence of why they put precursors in their mail, because it makes you think about it. That’s how marketing works.

You seem to paint a picture that somehow all marketing is false or exaggerated. I’m pretty sure not all gold sellers are scammers. Otherwise they would’ve stay afloat for too long. Therefore I think my concern about them controlling atleast a part of the precursor market is legit.

You aren’t seriouly trying to string those statements into a logical argument, are you?

Its not a claim that all marketing is false, its an observation that this marketing has been successful – wether its true or not, it got under your skin and into your head.

He never once said Goldsellers are scammers. Obviously ones that are successful over time deliver on their transactions.

NEITHER of those things lend any credibility to the claim of sole control of the precurrsor market. With an added logic check of if a gold seller is offering a precursor, its not on the TP, and thus doesn’t impact the legitimate market whatsoever. And then there’s this strange detail that keeps ppping up… the guy you’re arguing with can essentially press a button and see where every precurrsor in the game is at and note every single time one changes hands without any obvious in-game finacial transaction. I THINK he might have some factual basis for his statments about how “controled” precursors are. Maybe.

Also, I doubt that this gold selling company’s idea was to highlight your shortcomings when it comes to economy and especially precursors, but that’s exactly what I thought when I saw the mail in my inbox.

Agent Smith’s ‘short commings’ being what? That you don’t have a precurrsor? Get over yourself.

John Smith.4610:

Tallis.5607:

Lenneth.1372:

I really think they need to adjust lodestone drops.

Then the prices of lodestones would drop

In a virtually economy like this one, that isn’t necessarily true. Because of the ease of entry, it’s not uncommon to see an item become more common, more players receive the item naturally and enter the market, creating more demand and increasing prices instead of decreasing prices.

Do you think vial of powerful bloods is an example of this?

Back in mid January the price of them was 10-20s. Now with the increased drop rates of T6 and moldy bags, the price of vial of powerful bloods has increased even more!

The person who started this thread is advertising for the goldseller, inadvertently or not.

It’s a lot like reporting on terrorists: its what they want. Exposure and presence in the daily dialogue is the point.

To me the psychology is pretty obvious… Those who would buy a precurssor under any circumstances, be it from the trading post or a gold seller are motivated by fear. They are AFRAID of the odds of getting one to drop in high level play or of creating one through thet Mystic Forge. When you have a target audience you know is afraid, how to you motivate them: you scare the kitten out of them. Claiming sole control of the supply is ABSURD, but it’s just so insideously plausible to people living in fear…

I have decided to put this topic as there were many topics regarding the issue in Black Lion Trading section before.
First of all let me thank you Anet for this wonderful title. It is a pleasure to play it.

Recently I have bought my precursor. I play Warrior so the obvious choice for me was the Colossus as I am going for the Juggernaut.
Now you can read a lot of complaints regarding precursors prices on this and every else GW2 forum. Below are my thoughts regarding, You don’t have to agree with my opinion, you don’t have to share it but at least read it. It may help you.

For those of you who are saying that atm price is to high you obviously haven’t try to craft one have you. I have lost around 200ish gold to the MF before I decided to actually buy it. At that time the Colossus cost about 500ish gold and to be honest its price did not change that much. I mean you got some spikes in price but the average is still the same. I am not saying it won’t rise but it will be natural process rather than speculation.
I was always saying that the price is right when there are people willing to pay for it. When I bought it the lowest selling order was 515ish gold and the lowest buy order was around 450 – 460ish. I got my for 475 gold from a sell order. I was lucky enough to check GWTrade and saw that someone has listed it at such a low price. I suspect someone has just crafted one and listed for lower price hoping for fast sell. And it was a fast sell indeed. You can actually see a drop on GWTrade on Sunday (check by yourself). At that time I was competing with couple of potential buyers. I don’t know exact number but from the changes in buy orders I suspect there was at least 3 other customers willing to buy the Colossus at that time.

It took me around 2 weeks to gain money I needed. It wasn’t a simple task but as you can read for yourself its absolutely possible and I have learned so much in the process.
I knew straight away that simple grind is not a solution here. I am a casual player, hate grinding and I prefer to enjoy and play the game, rather than force myself to focus on one task or goal and do just that.
Having all this in mind I started to think about other possibilities.
Gold sellers? No thank you. Buying for Gems? You will have to spend a lot of money to get just one item. Don’t get me wrong I do support ANet for their work but the amount of gems you need to buy a precursor is just crazy.
I was actually forced to learn the ways of how to make money in GW2. It took some time and effort and a bit of practice but again is totally doable and the further you go the more easy it becomes.
The hardest bit was to get first 50 – 100 gold. After that I had the knowledge required to achieve what I wanted. All I needed was time.
The reason I am telling about this is simple. Because I was forced to expand mu knowledge and try to find different ways or any ways at all to gain my goals I actually learn how to make money in GW2, I have learned how to work around problems, I became a better player.

Why do I think that precursor price is a fair price?
Legendary are supposed to be a unique items. All the other materials are easily obtainable and sooner or later everyone can get them. The only thing that’s not is the precursor. Because of the drop rate and the amount of luck needed to create one I do think that they even are a bit under priced right now. Not all of them, only the less popular one. If you think differently please try to make one for yourself.
I am not saying there is no speculation on the market at all. There is in a real word there is in a game world. That’s normal. I don’t think however that it got the influence people think it have and the price of the precursor is the price of the simple buy-sell relation.
It is completely possible to get amount of gold required but I don’t think one will be able to do it by simple grinding the content. You need to look into different options. It is possible all you need to do is to try.
Craft is a very lucrative and efficient way of getting money and I always smile when people are saying otherwise. You need to look into ways to increase your profit. Globs are to expensive? How can I get them in a different way? Maybe next time instead of selling all my materials on TP I will actually invest them and craft something and sell it for profit? Selling 10 Globs will give you around 4 gold? You can craft 2 items with that and sell them for 8-10 gold. See the difference? T6 materials to expensieve? T5 are relatively cheap and you can transform them into T6 using MF and some of your skill points. You can farm T5. That’s easy.
So please stop complain that something is impossible and try to think how to get the things you want. You would be surprised from the results.

Friends, Family, people I really don’t know, I would like to bring a matter to your attention. I would like to be nit-picky and talk about the value of gold in Guild Wars 2.

Now, when we think of gold, we all think of that little yellow circle of currency we all desire to have plenty of. Some of us on the other hand, may also think of things such as gold ore and/or ingots. The problem with this, is that we have a bar of gold, which has much more refined gold, than the actual gold coin with a market value of 1g. Currently, gold ingots are selling for 58 copper on the marketplace. This brings me much fear for the market of this game. Sure, many would say that it’s all in the markings of the coin, a piece of metal isn’t a penny unless it’s minted as such. That may be true, but counterfeiting would be a very feasible skill with the kind of technology available, and there have been no counterfeiting measures shown within the game. For all we know, the kitten coins could even be blank. For the sake of the argument however, let us assume that they’re minted coins. It would be a simple matter of taking these coins, making a clay imprint, and ultimately creating a casting to which gold bars could be smelted down into coins, causing havoc and chaos within the economy. Think about it. One gold is 10,000 copper. At 58 copper per ingot, that’s a little less than 178 fresh gold ingots that you can smelt down into an amount of gold we can only guess at, not knowing the exact measurements and purity of each.

The matter at hand troubles me greatly, ANet. It’ll be like Nazi Germany’s inflation all over again, except with sacks of gold in place of bundles of paper money. Somebody will go to buy a basic salvage kit to find that the price has raised another 30 gold within the few minutes that they were busy. People complain about market listings as it is, but this inflation problem would put even the Black Lion trading Co. out of business, and power in a world where currency no longer holds any value. Gold is only the worst part of the problem at that. We still have natural silver and copper nodes out there that can go through the same process.

So what do you say, ANet, would you care to explain how we would fix this dire situation? The ball is in your court.