I laughed so hard when I read your post. You are obviously someone who’s in a large enough active guild that is filled with dungeoneers (in a game that was never meant to be about dungeons) who spends his time gathering the large amount of mats that drop only in dungeons at present (even with the current dungeon nerfs) who manipulates the HIGHLY regulated TP and gets large sums of gold from it judging by your reply to this poster.
Seriously. It’s hilarious. First of all, OP is absolutely right, jealous or not. Second, the dungeons in this game were never meant to be the sole focus, in fact their original statements specifically poo pooed the idea of the dungeons being any type of major part of the experience or focus for any part of the game. Third, just because YOU run dungeons to get the stuff you can sell doesn’t mean that’s how this game started out, originally one didn’t have to step one toe in a dungeon, and that’s the way it was meant to be. And finally, the TP is so highly regulated people have been abusing it since the start. They learned the system Anet is using and put in posts that are even under the vendor price STILL to this day making Anet have to go thru and correct them ad nauseum, AND Anet has to put in posts of items of their own to fix many of them. It’s definitely not a fair system at all.
It’s almost impossible to gear your toon the way you want to especially for those who started playing AFTER the loot drop/DR/MF fiasco that we’ve been dealing with for a month now and after the Nov 16th patch without buying gems.
Wow, I don’t think you could be any more wrong in your assessment of me. I’ve only run a few dungeons, and I make most of my money by buying materials from the TP and crafting them into items that I sell for profit. I don’t have large sums of gold because I spend it too fast, but that doesn’t matter because someone with 1000 x the gold I have does not alter how much fun I have when I play.
I can understand that people may feel frustrated about feeling “forced” to run dungeons, but I’ve only run fractals once myself. I don’t feel forced to do these things “just to keep up” with everyone else, as I feel the game doesn’t require me to do so in order to keep doing the things I enjoy doing. Yes, people are “compelled” to do them to earn gold that they might wish to spend on longer term goals such as legendaries, but I’d rather do something I enjoy than burn myself out in the process of achieving my goals.
It’s not impossible to gear your character without buying gems, there are exotics that are easy/cheap to obtain. If you want more rare/prestigious items, then it may take a longer to acquire them.
The question i would like to ask you is: Does this bother some people because its nearly impossible to manipulate the ecto market?
Just a thought.
Really? Some people must not have made hundreds of gold on recent jewellery exploit, through exploits. Some ohters will not make extra hundreds more when ecto prices rises again?
The two things you identify do not equal market manipulation. The jewellery “exploit” increased the supply of ectos, hence the price dropped. Those who will make money from ecto prices rising again are likely to have stockpiled at the cheap price and get rewarded when/if the price returns to normal levels.
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.
That’s what I tried to say in my post. Thanks for shorten it.
Except, these players are in fact removing gold from the economy due to the TP fees.
As someone who crafts items for profit, I’m not overly worried about the price of ectos as even when they are at high prices I can pass on the increased cost in the prices of the items I sell.
Cheap ectos are nice, but unless you’re saving up for a legendary (or ascended I guess) I don’t see much point in hoarding them.
I should clarify that by “exploit” I don’t mean this in the usual negative manner that applies to the things people do to bypass difficult (or boring) content, but rather that the salvaging results are an unintended consequence of the item that people have legitimately “exploited” for a profit.
I don’t think anyone should be punished for this, just that it is something that needed to be closed down.
Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.
So lets say I craft a krait greatsword for 40s, I salvage it get 3 ectos worth up to 90s. Oh crap exploit !
If the krait greatsword required an ecto to craft and could be “reliably” salvaged for more, yes. I’m aware that there are “edge” cases where you can salvage for profit, but they have a lot less potential to unbalance the economy than this one did.
And that’s all you probably needed to do, no one’s saying “don’t you dare disagree” just don’t start out with the old chestnut of envy either otherwise you’re setting yourself up for the accusation of being inflammatory even if it’s wrong or not a solid response it’s going to be where they think you’re going with it if that makes sense?
I can see what you’re saying. I do try to think about how my written words might be interpreted on these forums, so I’ll bear this in mind for future responses. You might however keep in mind the context of comments like the ones I made before writing off the rest of the post.
saying “that player got a ton of gold and used his gold to bully the market into creating massive false demands” isn’t saying “I wish I’d done that” the intent is that said player could possibly bought said gold via third party means, or via the CS itself and then proceeded to make a killing and as gold is a resource generated by players it’s taking from others to add to your own personal wealth, that’s not inherently wrong so long as they’re getting fair prices for what they’re selling, but honestly is that the case? with all the botters and the sheer lack of value on crafted items over materials can you honestly say that people causing shortages with buyer groups to clean up by flipping is something that you WANT in a game?
If that’s the sort of thing the OP is concerned about, then I wish he’d stated it more clearly. I do think the TP does reward some behaviours that aren’t acceptable to a lot of the player base, but I wouldn’t scrap the whole thing because of it.
I’ve managed to find value with crafting items using materials purchased through the TP, and I know others have too. I’m unaware of any shortages caused by buyer groups, but then again, I don’t spend too much time studying individual markets. Generally the market corrects itself pretty quickly after such manipulations.
@ Hellkaiser:
I perhaps could have phrased it better, but when the OP’s argument contains the line “What really makes pure capitalism a killer, though, is knowing how successful others have been.” then it opens itself up for exactly that sort of criticism. I’m still struggling however to see how my comment is “borderline inflammatory” and “offensive” given I was addressing the OP’s reasoning including an envy factor not calling the OP envious.
I’m not an elitist, I dabble in the TP a little, but actually make most of my gold via crafting, but have found I can spend it almost as fast as I make it, so I haven’t acquired a large bank balance that I feel needs to be defended. I do however like the TP implementation in this game, even though it has its’ flaws and drawbacks.
In terms of arguments against the TP, the OP had a few points he could have developed further rather than focusing on the wealth some people have been able to make.
Here’s one point that the OP could have gone further with:
Stocks, though, are much trickier: you’re basically making money by moving money around. Certainly it’s also a skill, but there is no product, and the rules are murky and reward behaviors that many people in this world consider selfish.
Or even expanding on the points he made that for every TP winner, someone loses would have been better (imo).
Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.
While your arguments against “degressive” random chance have some merit, your argument against the TP seems to come down to envy
Stopped reading after this, you completely destroyed your own argument by framing it badly. If I had a euro for each time I read the words “jealousy” or “envy” on an mmo forum post that was complete rubbish, you’d be envious of my billions, it’s REALLY that simple.
Which is your loss, because I didn’t give that aspect any more focus than that one line, but realistically how else do you describe the following reason given by the OP for disliking the TP…
And when the vast majority start realizing that there are people with tens of thousands of gold in-game just a few months in, while they have tens of gold, it makes it feel even less rewarding. Everyone wants to win, but seeing others “win” thousands of gold in the same time you make dozens makes your dozens feel even less valuable – because you could have had thousands.
It is effectively saying, “the TP is bad because it means other people make more money than I do”. If the OP wanted to argue against the TP, then there are better arguments to be made than this.
It is going to rise and unfortunate due to the considerable mistakes Anet has made the population has dropped off drastically. They are squeezing people now best they can cause it is going to get worse.
Wanna loot that monster 1gem please.I expect that in Feb with the release of the epic new content there will be a free to play announcement in order to bring in the people.They continue to manipulate the TP and gem prices so they will continue to squeeze anyone with a credit card for as long as they can.
And your evidence for these statements would be what exactly? I have seen zero evidence that ArenaNet is manipulating gem prices, let alone the TP prices.
While I don’t see the game going F2P any time soon, I am able to predict a rise in the price of tinfoil hats…
Since most exotic gear is only worth less than 5-10 silver to a vendor, anything past 15-16 silver is a profit.
Wow, he isn’t going to get 9-something gold out of it, but he is still making close to 160 times the vendor value of it. Quit complaining.
congratulations, u compared an exotic’s worth with the merchant sell price. genius.
Or he just described the seller’s view of the “profit” he makes from selling the item. He (or she) is making a decent amount above what they could receive from vendoring or salvaging the item, and they don’t particularly care about maximising the profit.
While your arguments against “degressive” random chance have some merit, your argument against the TP seems to come down to envy over the profits that some people are making playing the market.
The games I’ve played that have “progressive” random chance tend to have it in place for items that are required or necessary to progress further in the game (i.e. as part of the gear grind), which doesn’t quite apply to GW2 as there really aren’t any gear checks holding you back from content (with the exception of higher levels of fractals).
The TP is not “pure capitalism”, but is a (lightly regulated) competitive marketplace. Capitalism involves private ownership of the means of production and the production of goods and services for profit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism). While those who amass great in-game wealth are able invest heavily in the markets, they cannot take control over the means of production for goods and services (i.e. loot drops, gathering nodes, crafted items) or use that wealth to bar others from entering into the market.
Maximus is right. Potentially with a 2g gap, others are more likely to buy it. If you just undercut by 1c, potentially you’ll get undercut as well. With a 2g gap, a lot of potential sellers have to think if they wanna list at 7.99 or 9.99.
Not really. Unless its a fast selling item, most would just undercut him.
As you say, it depends on how fast the item usually sells for… Those with items listed above his price have to write off a 50s+ listing fee if they want to relist below him, so they may be prepared to just wait till his sells if the demand is there.
While the 1c undercut is very common, it is valid to undercut by other amounts. In this case, the seller probably wasn’t confident that someone would pay 10g for the item, or at least not within the timeframe that they would prefer to sell it.
Exactly, and they’re the kind of players that feed this rubbish, vote with your feet, not with your wallets.
I don’t think many people are going to leave the game over the price of costumes in the gem store… the chests might be a different story, but again, I doubt that they are causing people to walk away from the game completely.
(edited by Astraea.6075)
While I don’t personally care for the costume this time around, I bought one of the halloween ones and think the gem cost is reasonable. Yes, you can only buy gems in bundles of 800, but it’s not like you can’t use those gems towards something else or even convert them to gold.
I do think there does need to be a better means of storing costumes you’ve purchased to avoid these taking up too much bank space as more costumes are released, but that’s a discussion for another thread.
It’s 700 gems for one costume, or $8.75 if you prefer (not $15 as you state), and there may still be some free headgear (other than the wizard hat) available one the event has progressed further.
Since Arena Net is pretty tight lipped about the currency exchange, it’s hard to tell how much gold is entering or leaving the market. Earlier tonight I purchased ~1000g in gems http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem . I should have done this sooner but after reading the patch notes I felt that I had too much of my net worth tied up in gold. When I made my purchase, the price spiked up as I would have expected. However, I did not expect it to almost instantaneously return to the same level I purchased at. It’s entirely possible that someone was refreshing the exchange, waiting for such a spike to convert gems to gold. However, I think it more likely that Arena does not want the price increasing too fast, and potentially discouraging other people from converting gold to gems, which leads to the main reason of my post.
If Arena is more actively involved in the currency exchange than they have led us to believe, then we have no insight to how much gold is leaving the economy. This means we will have little warning of a market downturn and as long as Arena keeps us in the dark, we’ll have to rely on our reasoning, and based on that I think we face a significant chance of deflation in the market.
Firstly, thanks for the analysis Logun. I’m not sure however that what you described happening with gold → gem prices can be laid at ArenaNet’s door.
Gems have been constantly rising over the past month, in part because there were a lot of people stocking up in anticipation of Wintersday. Some of those people would have been doing so for speculative purposes, so it’s quite within the realms of possibility that one or more of them “cashed out” not long after you bought your gems.
I am also unable to think of a good reason for ArenaNet to intervene in the gold → gem market in this manner except perhaps to remove gold from the economy to rein in inflation. While this is a possibility, I don’t think it likely that ArenaNet would make this sort of intervention in the economy at this stage of its development.
This is not to discount everything you’re saying about deflation however. There may still be a lot of gold leaving the economy during the Wintersday event.
These goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but in my view the game does need new content to keep things fresh and people interested in playing.
Having said that bug fixes are important, and so is making improvements to the current systems (e.g. guild functionality), but neither of these should be the sole focus of the Devs.
Yeah, I interpreted it as “Yes, there will be new recipes for Wintersday. They use ONLY new mats dropped during Wintersday.”
That said, I think they probably will still use incidental ordinary mats, just not as much as Halloween’s recipes did.
I went back and read the thread again, and it contained confirmation that there aren’t any resource nodes for Wintersday (alas for candy cane trees) and new Wintersday materials will drop while playing during the holiday event. It was silent on whether the holiday recipes will require any incidental ordinary materials.
The thing to realise is that once you start levelling and opening up the world, you can start doing things before level 80 that in other games would be classified as “end game”. While level 80 is the destination, having fun with the journey is just as important.
They already said mats from the Halloween event (ie candy corn) are part of the new recipes for this x-mas event..
That’s not how I interpreted what they said… I could be wrong, but I believe there will be new materials that drop while taking part in the holiday events.
I suppose it’s possible someone was trying to get as much commendation before the update even though it’s been confirmed that it will still be available after the update.
It could be somebody farming commendations to stock up on BLK’s. I believe commendations are probably the most cost-efficient way of obtaining keys at the moment.
This seems likely to me too… stocking up on keys in anticipation of Wintersday. While the recipe will still be valid once Wintersday is live, acting now would be a way of getting ahead of any potential price rises caused by a surge of people doing this.
Here’s the post where John Smith confirmed that the gem exchange operates using a supply of gems and gold. This means that other than the initial seeding amount and paid tournament winnings, all gems in the exchange come from players and must have initially been purchased with real money.
From https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/page/7#post705345
There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.
@ Cruzyo: While inflation may account for some of the increase in gold → gem prices, the recent additions to the gem store are likely to have had a larger influence. After all, people converting gold → gems are (usually) wanting to spend those gems in the gem store. If there is increased demand for gems, then that will help push the rate up, inflation by itself won’t do anything if no one wants gems in the first place.
I am sorry but I disagree. You fail to realize if the economy is inflated and you are selling something at a higher price all other items you are interested in buying will also be selling for a higher price.
It is not a one way road.
I also disagree with the gem exchanged. Gold from gold sellers is 3 to 1 cheaper over gold from gems, so why would they convert gold to gems to convert them back again? They would be destroying a lot of gold in the process.
I will agree, the economy is broken because of bots, only because they were removed from game. Now supply cannot keep up with demand, and a small abundance of money can be used to manipulate certain markets to the point where supply cannot out pace people profiting.
All you have to ask yourself is, is the economy better now or was it better a month or two ago when bots were thriving?
As I posted before, “wealth” is relative, and more importantly the means in which a lot of people gain wealth in this game is static, and is not going up with market prices, which is why so many people are having a hard time with the economy right now.
Except items sold by NPC vendors (such as cultural armor) are immune to this inflationary effect, so generating more in-game wealth from farming benefits people who want to buy these sorts of items. Also, I doubt that the inflationary effect would be evenly spread across all items, so while items may cost more in general, it’s more likely that the effect on a specific individual will be mixed.
The economy isn’t broken because bots were banned, it has been going through an adjustment because the “artificial” supply dried up. It’s up to players to either fill the gaps in supply or be prepared to pay higher prices for those items. Now there are items that aren’t farmable, but people find ways to increase the supply if the prices rise high enough (ectos are a good example of this).
Which markets are you referring to that people are manipulating to the point where supply cannot outpace profiteering?
As a “flipper”, I’m trying to buy items low and sell them at a profit, but who am I buying items from? Players who don’t wish to wait for the goods to sell before they receive their money. They are getting better prices for their goods than they otherwise would have. Who am I selling to? Players who don’t wish to wait to receive the goods they want. They are getting their goods at a cheaper price than they otherwise would.
Pfff. Without you in the middle, the guy you are buying from would simply sell to the guy you are selling to; the first would be able to sell for a higher price, the second would be able to buy for a lower price, and we would have one less greedy middle-man in this story. A win for both seller and buyer.
I think you missed the whole point. It’s because there are players in the middle that players who wish to sell immediately get better returns and those who wish to buy straight away get cheaper goods.
I believe the purpose of the take all button rather than allowing you to select which items to pick up is to stop people using the TP to store items indefinitely.
@OP: perhaps you could borrow some gold from a friend and use that to list enough items to clear out inventory space so you can clear your pick up tab.
Hurtful.
I’d say they were up to an 8 or 9 before the ban waves, probably at a 4 or 5 now but rising.
I think there’s a balance to be struck between being active and being effective for ArenaNet (i.e. rather than playing whack-a-mole with individual bots, being able to detect and ban whole classes of bots in one fell swoop), but it would be nice to hear more about progress on this front.
I think he said something about the market having been altered since November and traders are in denial about it… I’m not really sure why he is conflating scarcity of loot drops with the activity of TP traders because, as far as I’m aware, there isn’t a direct connection.
Seriously? My word but you power traders are a thick bunch.
No connection between product availability and the marketplace?
I would recommend you contact the institute that issued your economic qualifications, and demand your money back.
And I direct you to my prior post where I stated:
Which does not change the point the OP was making. The value of items in our little virtual economy will always change as the game develops and matures (and the player base reacts to those changes). The competing power traders the OP alludes to will still help move the bid and sale prices closer together towards the current market value for the item.
Again, why are you conflating two unrelated things. It is true that traders can take advantage of shifts in the market (e.g. increased scarcity of certain items), but there are underlying reasons why the market is shifting in the first place.
Asides from containing half a thesaurus of adjectives and some vapourous commentary on how evil
money lenders in the house of godtraders on TP are was there anything of substance in that post?
I think he said something about the market having been altered since November and traders are in denial about it… I’m not really sure why he is conflating scarcity of loot drops with the activity of TP traders because, as far as I’m aware, there isn’t a direct connection.
…Because the power traders, by competing with each other, have pushed the sale price down, and the bid price up, Joe is able to buy the item cheaper, and if it drops for him while leveling, he can sell it instantly (his personally preferred method) for more money.
Bother it, only two paragraphs in and one of the wheels has come off.
Since early November, this situation has become untenable, as the rate and quantity of items dropping for people out in the field has been significantly reduced.
Scarcity of materials and items drastically changes the playing field, as is quite in evidence across the board.
Which does not change the point the OP was making. The value of items in our little virtual economy will always change as the game develops and matures (and the player base reacts to those changes). The competing power traders the OP alludes to will still help move the bid and sale prices closer together towards the current market value for the item.
I can understand how buying items off the trading post is a benefit to the person who listed the item and listing an item is a benefit to the person who later buys it.
However, in doing so you have driven down the sell price and driven up the buy price, meaning a third party gets less for what they farm and pays more for what they buy.
Yes you’re correct, presuming that person has the patience to set buy orders and list sales in the first place. Even I don’t do that for every item I buy/sell on the TP however.
I believe however, that these 2 prices would converge even without people engaging in flipping, but this activity speeds up the process.
The simple fact is that anyone who makes a lot of money from flipping or otherwise playing the trading post is hurting other players.
Everytime a trader makes a profit with no risk another player takes a loss with no gain.
Sorry but that’s so wrong…
I approach the TP in several ways when I’m playing the game.
As a “flipper”, I’m trying to buy items low and sell them at a profit, but who am I buying items from? Players who don’t wish to wait for the goods to sell before they receive their money. They are getting better prices for their goods than they otherwise would have. Who am I selling to? Players who don’t wish to wait to receive the goods they want. They are getting their goods at a cheaper price than they otherwise would.
However, when I’m not actively “playing” the markets, I will quite often buy and sell goods on the TP using the current prices, as I may wish to free up inventory space or want the item for crafting purposes and don’t wish to waste time waiting for the order to be filled.
Flipping is not a risk-free money making opportunity, I’m spending my gold and time to buy and relist goods with no guarantee that those goods will sell at the price I want. I’m taking the risks that other players don’t want to take, and that’s why I make the profits. Those who you claim are being hurt by this, aren’t prepared to spend their time waiting or assume the risk of not selling at a higher price.
@ Nike: The purpose of flipping (within the GW2 TP) is not to drive the price up or down, but to recognise the opportunity for profit when the difference between the two prices is great enough to outweigh the costs and risks involved. The side effect of this behaviour is that the “sell now” and “buy now” prices move closer together.
I placed buy orders for 1000 pebbles for a total cost 1g 88s. While I only received 6 silver doubloons from the transmutes, selling those and the other (non-pebble) results gave me 2g 78s 82c in return (after fees).
The ROI on this was just over 48% and I could have maximised my returns a bit more as I sold some of the items to the highest buyer rather than listing them myself.
@ Ath:
I know what you mean, but it’s hard to call people out on this sort of behavior without knowing what their true motivations are.
However, my rule of thumb is to never invest in anything that’s being discussed openly in the forums. My reasoning being that by the time I’ve heard about it, so have a large number of others, so whatever opportunity existed has likely already passed even if it is genuine.
2) Hahahah yea, flipping lowers the price, that’s why ppl do it, to LOSE money.
Flipping, cornering, scalping, whatever the market manipulators do or however it’s called, it’s being done to make money. That money has to come from somewhere, namely other players. And that money also has to cover the 15% reselling tax + margin and that is the loss a player incurrs if he buys from the manipulator instead of the original seller.
Flipping generally lowers the current sell price of items, people do it when there is a large enough margin between the buy and sell prices to make a profit after fees are taken into account.
As a flipper, I’m not manipulating the market, but rather working within the existing market and using my time and gold to make a profit while also providing better value to people who want to buy or sell items immediately by raising the return they get for selling to lowest buyer and lowering the cost for buying from the lowest seller.
In guild wars 1 you didn’t even have the option of buying it with gold. No one complained. It was RL money or no extra bank slot. This thread just proves what cheapskates most elitists are. You want the bank slot, you don’t want to pay RL money for it and you don’t even want to pay gold for it. Seriously???
Excuse me, but in Guild Wars, there were no soulbound/account bound items. Every item could be transferred and stored. It was inconvenient to keep things on other characters and for the convenience of having it all readily accessible, it cost real money. The current system artificially inflates the need to use the bank by preventing another character from holding a soulbound item or another account from holding an account bound item. That is a gimmick to drive people to buy gems in order to meet basic needs.
It’s sensible to create incentive for people to buy gems, but when they do things like that it is no longer just about convenience. Consider an engineer’s space needs compared to a warrior. Nobody is demanding free tabs, we’d like the ability to store our stuff without being forced to trash it because of the excessive cost just to have the ability to keep what we earn.
Don’t forget the gems prices are so high because people are unwilling to pay money to a company that provides them fun. There’s only 1 way to get the prices down, and that’s buy supporting your favourite video game. In my opinion not really a bad thing since this support is completely voluntary.
We did pay money to the company. I paid $60 USD for my fun. Read other forums (DE, dungeon and ranger for starters) and take a guess why some of us feel just a bit displeased to face the reality of putting down more cash or dedicate massive amounts of time we don’t have and use so much of our game resources to get a fraction of something we used to enjoy for free.
Is that clear now?
And both bag space and (free) bank storage were more limited in GW1 despite the lack of account/soul bound items… I was always struggling for bank space in GW1, so I definitely didn’t “enjoy” the free storage you allude to.
The reality is that your $60 gets you an account with 5 character slots and a single shared bank tab. This is a lot of storage potential if you’re only interested in having one level 80 character.
If you are having difficulty managing inventory space, then you have the option of spending gems to buy more character slots, bank tabs, or bag slots. These have a fixed cost in real monetary terms and a variable cost in terms of gold (depending on the exchange rate) so it’s up to you to decide which is preferable.
If you don’t wish to pay for these extras at all, then don’t. You can play the game easily enough without them, although you might have to reduce the amount of stuff you hoard if it’s causing you problems.
I think it would be useful if the tool-tips for soul-bound items included the name of the character the item is bound to. This could be done by changing a line in the tool-tip from “Soul-bound” to “Soul-bound to [Nigel the Impaler]” (for example).
This change would help people identify the “owner” of soul-bound items they have stored in a shared bank space.
What they should do is make extra bank slots, bag slots, and more character slots decrease as the price of gems increases. Or possibly make them cost gold instead of gems, because as it stands the people that pay real money have a big advantage in game over those that can’t afford it.
As for everything else – particularly cosmetic items – I see no reason people shouldn’t have to pay real money to get these things. I’ll admit that I’d love to change my hair with in game gold, but arenanet has to make money and I see no reason I shouldn’t have to pay for it as long as it doesn’t give me an advantage over those that can’t afford it.
Extra bank slots, bag slots and character slots do not give you a big advantage over people who don’t have them. I have bought 1 bank slot upgrade (with gold → gems when it was slightly better priced) but while it’s nice to have it, I was managing okay without it by reducing my compulsion to hoard absolutely everything.
Given the current exchange rate, I’m not likely to buy another slot using gold anytime soon, but that’s because there’s other things I want to spend my gold on first. I am more likely going to spend some RL cash on gems for some of these non-essential items, and I will not regret it at all.
The point is that at different points, the gold → gem rate will prompt different people to act, well, differently in pursuing the items they want.
Just to respond to your last point, the purpose of increasing the buy order by 20g is more likely to be aimed at inducing someone to sell a precursor at that higher price, rather than just to overcut the existing offers.
Maybe alot of people are now done with their ascended backpieces? (or the hype is gone now?) I think that coupled with the banning is what drove the prices up in the first place.
While I don’t think the ascended items have actually done much to the price when compared to the initial bot bannings, I am personally part of the increased demand side of the equation. Not because of ascended gear, but because I finally finished levelling one of my craft skills to 400 about two weeks ago and started buying ectos on the TP in order to craft exotics…
Just saying that increased demand can be due to multiple factors, not just the one people assume is the culprit…
This is not true. Look at http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 and you will see the price increase started long before the introduction of ascended gear roughly around 1 November.
I do not know, what you see, but i see definetly something else:
[img]http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/big/dk9l-1e-f457.png[/img]
Just to clarify… I meant the price increase started around 1 November, which was about 2 weeks before the introduction of ascended gear with the 15 November patch…
Grammar fail on my part sorry.
Prices are plummeting really fast at the moment. Fine crafting mats are one of the best indicators of this, as they’re pretty much the base of the economy. They drop frequently, and then people turn them into everything else, runes, gear, ectos, and then eventually better gear. When they fall, everything falls. And they’re steadily losing their value again after peaking. There’s always going to be some up and down, but a lot of the crafting mats have lost ~50% of their value in two weeks.
Given the increase in price for (most) T6 mats and ectos over the past month, it’s no big surprise that the market is correcting downwards… yes, some prices have now dropped to nearly 50% of where they were at two weeks ago, but that price is still (generally) much higher than where it was a month ago.
There are some valid concerns about whether the bots are coming back, particularly if they come back in a large number, but it’s a big step to say the economy is “tanking” based solely on those concerns.
A month? Are you from the future?
It’s been 3 weeks… yes it should be fixed, but I’m pretty sure the problem is not being ignored.
This is really obvious right now. The entire economy is tanking again and the instances of me putting up big buy orders, only to have them filled with huge blocks of 250 eight times in a row, continue to go up. Apparently whatever Anet did was a temporary fix =/
I’m not sure what you mean by “the entire economy is tanking”. Prices are coming down, but there’s still people buying and selling items and making profits…
Bot banning is an ongoing battle between ArenaNet and the botters, and it was always going to be the case. I believe however, that ArenaNet may be able to respond to the influx of new bots faster than they did with the initial surge because part of the delay was due to ArenaNet developing the tools required to deal with the botters.
I think you’d want to use only end game stuff.
Crafting mats index et.
You could do a precursor index or something like that as well.
It’s hard to find representative items from each category.
It would depend on what the index is supposed to “represent”. If it’s meant to provide some measure of the economy as a whole, then it would need to include more than just the end game stuff.
What would probably work better would be a set of different indices to reflect different parts of the economy, but I’m not sure how you’d start deciding what these parts are or which items to include in the indices.
Or ArenaNet could gather metrics to see what the majority of players are doing while playing the game…
.That’s the most inaccurate way to measure it for sure. Take right now- even those of us who despise fractals are doing them simply because it is the best (or rather, only atm) way to get ascended gear.
Players will constantly migrate towards whatever the best method is, not always what the most fun is. In the end, the only way that metric could show player dislike over something would be if they stopped playing. And deciding that something is fun and accepted simply because the playerbase didn’t quit overnight hardly seems like an efficient way to do things.
It’s not inaccurate. What these metrics are often missing is the context behind the player’s actions.
My main point however is that is possible for ArenaNet to find out what the majority of players who don’t visit the forums are doing. Combining this with feedback from the forums (and other channels) helps to give them a better idea of what the player base enjoys or dislikes (or feels “forced to do”).
While forum users are a minority, most people who use it as an argument are using a logical fallacy
That is, they assume that everyone who is not posting on the forums, must not have the same mindset as those on the forums. Or that the forums does not indicate in any way the overall mindset of the larger population.
Forum posters are a minority. But it doesnt mean that our viewpoints and complaints are not indicative of what the majority of GW2 players also believe.
True, but it it doesn’t mean they are indicative either.
Thus returning to what I said above. Since the majority refuses to voice their opinion, you can either base your feedback on the minority who does, or just ignore ALL feedback and do whatever the crap you want, purely under the assumption that if your entire playerbase doesn’t quit overnight when you do something, it must be a good change.
Or ArenaNet could gather metrics to see what the majority of players are doing while playing the game…
Forum feedback is useful, but it needs to be treated with a grain of salt, as there is no way of determining how representative it is of the total player base due to the self-selecting nature of the participants.