Guild Wars 2

TL;DR

Facts:
1. The entire economy is pegged to Ecto
2. A single recipe caused Ecto price to drop 20% in 2 days (16th Dec – 18th Dec)

Cause:
Some players made use of the recyclable recipe using Prinstine Snowflake
Consistently getting 1 = 1 + x per salvage

Other notable stuff:
John Smith suggests that there are other unbalanced recipes, but nobody in the forum seems to know what he is referring to.

lDeadeyesl, BUTTERBLUME, are correct most of the time
Aura is either trolling or bad at logic/numbers. I can’t tell.
Essence Snow got mislead by Aura’s numbers, and made some bad arguments (not his fault).

source:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/38134 (snowflake)
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 (ecto)
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19700 (mithril)

@Tallis.5607

There can be no marketing balance unless Arenanet follows the rules of the World Trade Center and actually puts a price limit on how much an item can be sold for, the quantity amount, and quantity control of how much an item can be bought.

The Black Lion Auction House is a joke and a poorly designed trading post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

That is a rather overreach of using the term “exploit”.

Exploiting is used more to describe finding a bug or glitch in a game and using it to one’s advantage in some fashion. Like people finding their way into or around “physical” walls in WvW to kill lords from a place their entirely safe from other players.

This recipe was no bug. It was a brain fart. There was no extracurricular activities that players used to do this process. There’s a difference.

The outcome sucks for people who did not do this. I didn’t.

Players routinely get extravalue out of items by playing the TP market. By your definition they would be exploiters when in reality they’re not.

So. King John Smith’s statement basically stated that crafting anything with ectos that has a high profit return rate is considered an exploit. Okay, ArenaNet.

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

The problem is, you released a game that created an economy based on exploits, bots, and gold sellers. People were playing with disregard for the rules you set out for the longest time. Then you cracked down on botting and cleaned up the anti-exploit measures for farming after the economy settled on cheating being the norm.

Immediately afterward, you gave ~50% of all people participating in the Lost Shores event a precursor, which they immediately sold at the levels priced by botters and gold buyers. All of that gold people bought was being held by the Trading Post by offers made for big-ticket items. Suddenly it became available in the marketplace. Massive inflation occurred.

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

To be honest a majority players do exactly that but in all honesty it becomes harder and harder to turn away from those exploits when you make a conscious decision to cripple the economy but nerfing loot in general. For the most part those decisions begin to play a major role in why some turn to this behavior, some not all and certainly not myself but you need to take some responsibility.

Ticket: 121227-003051 resolved thx Gaile Gray if you had anything to do with it
.
But now my problem is i can not play like i normally do without that fear of being ban out of no where for no apparent reason…
From what i gathered over the pass week or so, there is a chance of being banned for the following:
1) sending or receiving mail
2) typing in chat
3) withdrawing from guild bank
4) participating in WvW
5) killing or grinding monsters/events
6) Crafting/salvaging/buying from vendor
7) Logging in(game thinks you are being hacked)
temporary ban or a ban in error.. a ban is still a ban
It’s driving me nuts….

…I was waiting for Guild Wars 2.

Now I am Level 80 and Rank 40 in sPvP. World completion is mine and I’ve done everything you have to offer. It’s not enough to keep me happy and still playing your game. It feels like a waste of time to be honest. I expected so much more from you and you can still save this game before some newbie company steals your ideas and features of this game and polish it for themselves – adapting their game to what people in Guild Wars 2 wants. I’ll take a break soon from Guild Wars 2 and come back in a year or two. I hope you’ll fix everything people want to see in Guild Wars 2 within that time frame so I can come back and enjoy your game again. I have been with you guys for 3 years before launch, posting suggestions and personal ideas for this game on your wikipedia site to make sure the outcome of this game was perfect which in my opinion it wasn’t. I will make sure to include what made me leave Guild Wars 2 so I can leave with a decent conscience.

PvE
Endless grinding for gear.
Endless grinding for karma.
Endless grinding for gold.
Endless shouting in LA for party.
Slow-paced movement throughout Tyria.
Repetitive Hearts.
Repetitive Dynamic Events.
Repetitive combat situations.
Repetitive mobs/foes in different shapes and abilities.

sPvP
Endless grinding for glory.
Endless grinding for arcane silvers.
Endless grinding for arcane crystals.
Endless shouting for free tourney guild.
Endless shouting for paid tourney guild.
Repetitive maps.
Repetitive enemy builds/combat situations. (2222222… and 100 blades… etc.)

WvW
…where’s “Guild Wars2”?

Thank you Arenanet for a 1k hour decent spent time and hopefully you’ll improve our game.

Fred
Aka Aeranima (Aeonixus in game)

Well after how well the ama went I wouldnt hold my breath. After the 15 of Nov and the ama it has been silent save Robert in the dungeon directory asking about bugs.

As far as I know 1 person works there with 50 mods for the forums and it explains the dire state the game is in.
All joking Aside I would rather not hear what they have to say since it is all condescending you dont know ….. crap they tell us.

Or it is well we didnt mean like that you arent interpreting it correctly. (ascend,DR bots,Wvw,TPVP).
Open world loot is 0 as in I get porous bones anets response over a month later is well nothing wrong but if you perceive. I and many others perceive nothing we know and see it. Just have the gonads to tell people to run facs all day.

NO I dont want them to communicate. I prefer they not say a thing and leave things alone. I would prefer to never hear from Mike O, Colin J, Chris W, Eric F again. They cant keep their word and will throw anything under the bus like GW1 without hesitation.

The damage has been done and all over the fan forums this game is taking a kicking. Those PO’d Nov 15th people have been going to work just like SWG did to TOR.

Now if they actually wanted a dialogue instead of wizzing on my shoe and telling me it is raining then I would be stunned. I think they really should listen to the community before it is too late. Many people have great ideas on here and care a lot – talking with them would be a good start.

Alice.8694:

Hawkmoon.5849:

Clearly, they don’t care.

The forums rules actually say do not make threads calling arenanet out. There are better ways to present things than trying to cause sensationalism.

Never claimed or intended to “cause sensationalism”.

Alice.8694:

That you seem to think that Arenanet should be answering all the player call outs WHILE developing and working on the game is absurd.

Never said that, or implied it, either.

Alice.8694:

Would you rather they were answering many of the sensationalist rants repeatedly posted all over the forum or actively working to fix the problems that are within the game while improving and adding new content.

I believe I stated my opinion of what I wanted quite clearly. In case I didn’t, let me give you a summation:
I would like to see increased communication from the Development Team. This would include interaction on a semi-regular basis, via forum, live stream, AMA (although I personally believe that Reddit is horrible…), or even an in-game Q&A like we used to see in GW1. I did not, however, suggest that they answer sensationalist posts; I would agree that there are many. However, there are also several legitimate issues and problems presented that are ignored until eventually swept under the rug. This is where “increased communication” comes into play.

Alice.8694:

It’s either/or… take your pick.

I disagree, as I think most players would.

Alice.8694:

Better communication from the developers would be nice, but constant babysitting of peoples feedback is totally unnecessary and needless. Most developers who do it either do it within their own personal time or sacrifice dev time for it. Many questions and requests require answers from several different teams and would likely be a lot of work to compile.

It’s never gonna be 1:1.

I wouldn’t expect it to be 1:1, and didn’t imply that it should be. I did, however, show another example of a game in the same market, in which Developer communication is considerably better, and far more consistent. Rift manages to release major content updates on a regular basis (just released a major expansion pack called Storm Legion, if you didn’t know), and yet maintains a level of communication that is far and above what we’ve seen from ANet. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to check out their forums- you don’t even need the game to read their boards.

All I’m saying, is that the communication here has been terrible, and there’s really no good reason for it that we’ve seen or heard (I’m all ears if someone would like to correct me on that). You cite things like hours in the day; then explain why Trion publishes such an amazing product in Rift and yet manages to maintain a solid and open line of communication with their playerbase? I’m not making it up. As I said, you can go right to their site, and see who has what job title, and how often they’ve been posting. It’s not a “specialized team” of people who interface with the community (although they have those, too- their CM James “Elrar” is awesome); it’s the actual class leads and content designers and developers.

With my time at my job before i retired constant communication with customers and subcontractors (ours being military) was a must. 24 hour communication everyday, no matter how small the update.

A quote from Anet, i cannot post the email or i will get trashed by the billy club bully that runs this forum, stated that “We do not feel there is a need to communicate daily or often” words to that effect, changed slightly to not be in violation but 99% sums it up.

I stated i disagree, the dev felt otherwise. Again, you see an unregulated industry with no fines or consequence do as they want, the only pressure customers can bring to bear is not to spend real cash, but targeted demographics ensure a solid cash flow.

These Anet folks know what they can get away with and these forums will do little to influence them unless they see it threaten their gemstore game mechanic wise, and lack of constant communication is not something they want to do.

This next fact is also not opinion, people need to remember, customers of an MMO game or any video game are not considered in the same way customers of say Home Depot (Example), or a large automobile manufacturing firm are considered upon purchase of an item. Something we as consumers must take into consideration when demanding changes to the product. Without stiff penalties hanging over their heads alot of these phd programmers simply laugh at regulation and the masses of complaints, i know, i have had them do it to my face, right before i had them canned.

Things to think about.

Hawkmoon.5849:

Clearly, they don’t care.

Yes because betting the lively hoods of 250 developers on a risky and high maintenance product is totally not worth caring about.

They have said on numerous occasions during the latest AMA they had on reddit that developer/player communication is lacking severely. These things take time to implement and while important, shouldn’t take precedent over other things they are working on.

The forums rules actually say do not make threads calling arenanet out. There are better ways to present things than trying to cause sensationalism.
That you seem to think that Arenanet should be answering all the player call outs WHILE developing and working on the game is absurd. There is only so much time in a work day. Would you rather they were answering many of the sensationalist rants repeatedly posted all over the forum or actively working to fix the problems that are within the game while improving and adding new content.

It’s either/or… take your pick.

In development you are forced to make harsh choices with your time. Choosing to work on one thing may permanently prevent you from working on another.

Feedback is being fed to those who need to know, we know this because things mentioned here have been worked on actively and some ideas given by the player base have turned up within the game.

Better communication from the developers would be nice, but constant babysitting of peoples feedback is totally unnecessary and needless. Most developers who do it either do it within their own personal time or sacrifice dev time for it. Many questions and requests require answers from several different teams and would likely be a lot of work to compile.

It’s never gonna be 1:1.

Artemis Noir.3804:

@Hawkmoon,
The Rift communication looks very good.

Equally, though I have never played the game, I have seen WoW’s patch notes and they are extremely detailed as well.

There is much I truly love about GW2, despite the need for fixes in various places, but were I to give Anet a grade on their communication it would be no higher than a C+, and that is only if I were in a generous mood.
I’ve worked in marketing… regular and informative communication with your customers or client base is KEY.

Yes, and the things I posted don’t even touch the regularly scheduled live feeds in which the Dev team sits down and takes player questions- MINUS the “PR speak” ANet is famous for…

For those of you saying “they’re on vacation”, that’s great. But it doesn’t excuse the terrible level of communication we’ve had prior to the holidays.

Communication is critical these days. Social media, Twitch.tv and YouTube, fansites, and yes, especially the official forums… there are so many options for ANet to give players the feeling like they’re in the loop and know what’s going on with the game they love, and they fall abysmally short in this regard.

For the new year, I’d love to see a new strategy from ANet on their level of player communication.

Mod didn’t close this thread? Should at least closed it if they knew it was a bannable offense. Freaking Anet.

My friends at DRGN, you guys really need a wvw intervention with your cow, guardian commander that was in FABL tonight.

To start I suggest everyone chip in and buy him some armor, clearly he blew all his money on the commander tag and had nothing left for armor. You are a big guild, I am sure if everyone just chipped in a few silver he could buy his very first set of exotic. Proud moment I am sure.

Next, I suggest you as a guild sit down and pick out a nice build for him. I am not sure what would work best, but anything other than what he has now will be an improvement. Perhaps if you talk to some guardians outside the guild, they might help you guys with selecting the right build.

Lastly I think it is your duty as guildies, to help him expand his knowledge and skill of the guardian class. Again I suggest talking to some guardians outside the guild and come up with a lesson plan, maybe start with the basics.

In the spirit of helping I will share one of my warm-up workouts that I like to use when I haven’t played for a few days. Likely take most of the guild to help him set this up, but go to a supply camp that the enemy has just flipped and kill all the guards other then the lord. The goal is for the commander to melee the lord for the entire duration of his damage buff, using only dodge to stay alive. It is a great warm-up, I hope he finds it as useful as I do.

As a jeweler and salvager, it was nice to see so many of my competitors banned. Thank you!

If someone begged the devs you might be able to get them to post a picture that shows the skin of the in game 3D model. that would be a good starting point for making a pattern, expanding the skin here and there for seam allowances.

Has anyone thought about or started planning a pattern to make a stuffed griffon? My wife got a sewing machine for Christmas and it was one of the first things that crossed her mind.

Rovus.5428:

Dodging is necessary for making dynamic gameplay. If not for that, things such as thieves would dominate competitive play with their endless CnD that would be impossible to dodge, warriors would hit like a truck everytime without fail with their fully charged adrenaline shot from the rifle, guardians would be stupidly OP with their multitude of blocks which would be the only way to avoid attacks, etc.

Each to their own, I suppose.
Everybody have different tastes when it comes to gameplay. Some like slow, tactical battles of wits, such as chess or turn-based games. Some like it fast and hardihitting, having to stay on the move to survive. The game might just not be for you, and wether or not you want to play it, despite montly fees or not, is up to you.

And yet…games without this dodge gimmick don’t have this problem. You know why? Because they aren’t built entirely around a gimmick. If dodge wasn’t here, then balance would have been worked out differently.

Edit:

Good for you, you can play action RPGs then. Other players enjoy something slightly more challenging than face-rolling through dozens of enemies mindlessly.

Funny…since face-rolling through dozens of enemies midlessly is exactly how WvW, Dynamic Events, and Dungeons work in GW2.

Wow…hope that isn’t like a massive ban like the snowflake jewelery.
But guessing if u r using ur xp to trade in for gold I think that is legit.
Of course depending how much u value ur xp/gold ratio.

lynspottery.6529:

Personally, I am beginning to think Anet DOES NOT CARE about us.

Time for me to look for another game that does.

Careful! They’ll infract you! kekeke

Kaimick.5109:

My only response to this it allows for a gold sink to balance out economy.

This game already has more gold sinks than most mmos currently, also it would create more when a server tries to attack something they will have a lot of repair costs thanks to all the siege that remained, and attacking servers would also have to spend a lot on more siege weapons knowing they cannot attack from close range.

salluks.6017:

i fear this Feb update is so hyped and make or break fo a lot of people that even a small misstep from Anet will result in an outrage or just dead WvW.

Anet, please listen to the WvW before making changes going by every major update we have had so far, almost every update has missed something major and creates a storm.

I agree, hype is a double edged sword. On one had you get people to wait when they might otherwise not, or invest in something with the hope of the future. On the other had if it doesn’t live up to the expectations it is devastating. And the more hyped things get the higher the expectations, up to a point where nothing can realistically live up to them.

The best way to console people now and deflate the hype so Feb doesn’t cause all the rage is just to start leaking info. More real info = less hype = less disappointment.

That is why an interview like this gets such disappointment and rage because there was not really any real info up to this point. I hope it is a lesson learned. Share with the community and the community will share with you.