Guild Wars 2

In my case with the Twin Sisters I researched them before selling and there was are fairly consistent 50 +/- for sale over the previous few weeks. I put mine up for sale and within a few hours another 25 are posted. And I’ve seen this pattern repeat on other minor exotics that have been dropped on me from boss chests.

That’s what I’m calling odd. It’s as if to save on server cycles that a sub list of items that can be dropped is generated before the event from the much larger list of possibilities. Same thing when I use to buy rares for salvage. An event gets over and I get flooded with the same cleric shoulder pieces significantly more than all the other pieces I have high bid in for.

That’s why I discount all sites that offer TP investing advice, even if free. It’s more likely a pump and dump scheme for players looking to sell their supply to those “investing” for the “payday” in the future. Even if it comes in 6 months down the line these “advisers” can still claim the were right on the front page of their site or in their podcast.

Flippers do not force players to sell low or buy high, that’s on the players themselves for not seeking better prices.

Flippers can’t control supply. Therefore they can’t force prices higher.

If crafting was insanely profitable @HHR, would you feel the same way toward them for “not playing”.

Flippers “exploit” player psychology. Players want to treat the TP, which is all about buying and selling from and to other players, as another NPC vendor where items and money is immediate rather than seeing it as a flea market where they can set up their own table where they price the items they want to sell and post prices for items they want to buy. It is not the flipper’s fault that players aren’t willing to do this themselves so they step in to do it for them.

The fact that flippers can earn more money from players who voluntarily give it to them because they can’t be bothered for the extra 10 seconds to enter a bid or sell order themselves is a statement about players not flippers. Where is that money that flippers make coming from? It’s from selling goods gathered by other players who can’t be bothered to sell them themselves. They are simply aggregating the profits loss from his “suppliers”, other players. If a players sells the mats he gathered during his play session for 50c each (the current high bid) Vs 80c each (the current low sell order) because it saves him a few seconds then maybe he didn’t deserve the 25-26c each that the flipper makes that could have been theirs. But no, lets complain that players don’t have enough money for high end items and how unfair it is that someone makes money that players is surrendering freely.

@HHR you are arguing for rewarding stupidity by punishing those who aren’t.

If you aren’t using an SSD, defrag the drive with the dat file on it.

You can make blade shards in the Mystic Forge with sprockets. Recipe on the wiki.

10-15 per 50 sprockets with very rare chance for 50. But you can buy sprockets.

Well that and gw2.exe.

I am an “any programmer” but thanks.

I seen a slightly different problem, that the same item seems to drop with increased frequency. Days where I do get an exotic and choose to put it up for sale there’s a significant uptick of supply for that item over the next few hours. As if that item dropped onto a number of players within the same hour or two. Like if you roll for an exotic, everyone gets the Twin Sisters and since now supply is greater than demand and everyone is undercutting each other it doesn’t seem as special.

Of course there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. It just seems … odd.

First, TP flipping can’t scale indefinitely due to simple supply flow issues. So no infinite compound interest for the rich.

Second, because just about all reward drops are random, the only way anyone can be sure to get what they need is buying it from another. Coincidentally there are a lot of players wanting to get rid of the stuff they don’t want and that’s the reason for the TP.

Now other than establishing vendor prices on dropped items which defines the low end, ANet doesn’t touch the TP other than getting their 15% cut to help limit inflation. Bits and sell orders are entirely player driven.

The reason flippers can make any money at all is because a disproportionately large number of players simply don’t care about maximizing their earnings/controlling their costs when using the TP. They want their money/item NOW. Doesn’t matter if it costs a few % more for the items they want or they get a few % less from items they are selling. They want the immediacy. And that is where flippers step in when the price difference is wide enough for a profit to be made. They are simply using the same options that’s available to everyone, but only with a different goal in mind. It’s no different than in the real world where small business’s deal with a supplier rather than going directly to each manufacturer. TP flippers use the player base who seeks immediacy to both farm for them and act as the supplier they buy from. They provide the immediacy that players are seeking by evening out availability of buyers and sellers throughout the day, the immediacy that they seem quite willing to pay for.

Something else you may be overlooking is that there aren’t just one flipper for each item. This means there is some over/under cutting which is what stabilize prices toward the equilibrium. Unless of course you think there are cartels of players cooperating in manipulating prices.

You want to beat TP flippers? Educate your fellow players and help deny TP flippers both their supply and customers. Otherwise nothing else you say or suggests matters. The TP serves it’s function by providing a free and open market for players to trade their unwanted drops and crafted items. Unlike selling to a vendor, every TP sale removes money from the economy to help control inflation rather than add to it. The fact that some players can choose to play a player merchant and earn an income from doing it, more power to them.

What if crafting was highly profitable? Would you then be upset at the player craftsmen then? Not everyone has to be an adventurer fighting the good fight in an MMO.

I back up my gw2.dat file for exactly this reason. Maybe you should too if you constantly have trouble getting it patched.

And depending on your load out of items, it will also be easier, quicker so run off the beaten path and clear out critters for those areas for bonus XP as well.

You have one camp of players who say “Why can’t I wear/transmute <wrong weight> armor onto my <correct weight> armor?” So they come out with outfits and now another group of players chime in “But why outfits, I want to mix and match?”.

Outfits are easier because they can pretty much substitute the player model and scale by height/basic body type instead of making pieces than can conform to each area of the body while keeping the clipping to a minimum considering all the mix/match you can have with standard armor.

Not playing Guild Wars, wasn’t this the “standard” with outfits in that game, full outfit, no mix/match?

I would almost rather have a profession choice that then thins out the weapon sub category as well as only letting you see the armor with the correct weight for your profession.

Still have an all if you’re just shopping for salvage purposes.

Let me guess, you were trying to get tokens and didn’t realize you were going to get a ton of quartz.

As for time gating I think it was put in there to slow the creation of higher geared items so they wouldn’t rapidly appear once they were introduced. After all you can buy quartz. If quartz was account bound to begin with, then no harm converting all of them quickly because it will take time to gather.

Dude, really? It’s not like this isn’t already on the first page.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/List-Of-Things-We-Want-In-Gemstore/first

longshot.1397:

well now.. let me think best way to play GW with ur GF.

1: strip dungeons.. everytime someone dies, remove a piece of clothing.
2: Shot thru the Heart: everytime you die in WvW you must drink a shot
3: Level for Love: everytime you level, other must give you something zone appropriate: EG: 10 Ancient Woods (hehe) for a level in Cursed shore
the list is endless. Think of fun RL scenarios you can play out for certain achievements.

yes, i am a dirty ol man

I was going to suggest something similar but I thought better of it (family friendly and all) and was only going to suggest a smooch every time either of you complete one of the daily achievements.

Well the quarterly reported income figures from NCSOFT, in millions of South Korean Won are:

3Q 2012 – 45,841
4Q 2012 – 119,013
1Q 2013 – 36,382
2Q 2013 – 28,899
3Q 2013 – 24,481
4Q 2013 – 33,555
1Q 2014 – 25,142

During this time period the exchange rate to USD bounced between 1050 and 1150 KRW per USD which is why it’s not the same ratio between the two list of numbers.

Note they didn’t publish any 2Q2012 income since the game went live in Sept 2012. So in roughly 19 months the game’s total income is roughly $287 million US in the ballpark with Karizee’s numbers.

But again when the 2nd quarter numbers come out in 2nd week of August, China’s income will be listed simply as part of “royalties” and not reflected in the game’s income numbers.

Not from a realistic standpoint, we will see box sales as well as popular items returning during the last month of every quarter to boost income numbers. And BlueZone is wrong. Microtransactions is a means to extract as much income each player is willing to spend each month rather than a flat rate like subscriptions.

Well with the megaserver I no longer having problems finding people to take down the Nageling Giant, which spawns roughly once or twice an hour. Before the megaserver using a site that tracks how long a zone event was running, I saw the Giant roaming the city at times over 10 hours and I’m on Jade Quarry. Now it’t polished off in 5-10 minutes. I’ve killed it at least once a night, every night since the Apr 15th patch (I mine silver and iron in that zone).

Karizee.8076:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Well over $200 for the collector’s edition just as a start, and so much in gem purchases that if my spouse found out I would be in BIG trouble. I spent roughly $100 a month or more on gems. That is until I stopped playing. I know, your saying I am just one player, but there are probably tens of thousands of players just like me who stopped playing and that revenue loss will hurt. If you think your gem purchases make up for it, you better start spending a lot more if you want to see the game survive.

Silly.

Q2 2012 25,800,000
Q3 2012 22,900,000
Q4 2012 107,000,000 <—-Launch year Christmas sales
Q1 2013 32,800,000
Q2 2013 25,800,000
Q3 2013 22,900,000
Q4 2013 32,000,000
Q1 2014 24,500,000

They just launched in the largest gaming market in the world. What do you think Q2 is going to look like?

Probably not as much as you would think because sales in China is booked as royalties in NCSOFT’s quarterly statement and not tied to a particular game. They may mention the reason royalties are up so much like they did when Blade & Soul entered China but Blade & Soul’s stated numbers don’t reflect China.

Nobody gets 1000g a day every day. If you believe the stories braggarts tell then you don’t realize you are being trolled. Just as players who drop precursor tags into their chats after boss events so it seems they got a precursor while you got two rares and a handful of greens. There isn’t the volume to sustain 1000g a day. A 1000g windfall sure but repeatable steady income, no.

You can make a lot of money infrequently, a little money frequently but not a lot of money frequently by flipping. The big payouts come from speculating and guessing right and knowing when to get out.

The one who farms gets 85% of the sales with no expense on his part but time.

A flipper gets 85% of the sales but has the expense of buying his stock from players using bids. A flipper needs to be able to sell an item for 17.7% more than it’s cost to make a profit at all.

Flippers can only raise the price over the long run if they can control supply. Since it’s been shown that it’s impossible even for low supply/high demand items like precursors, blaming them is simply incorrect.

Relisting fees are necessary. It’s there to encourage sellers to pick a reasonable price, the first time.

Sadly I think this may contribute to players selling to highest bidder because it’s a guarantee sale, risk is almost non-existent. I think the fear of having an item “stuck” at a high price and not wanting to lose your listing fee drives some players to not risk it. Of course this plays into the hands of those who flip who aren’t as afraid.

Using sites like gw2tp.com and gw2spidy.com is invaluable letting you see the swing over time of bids and sales orders so you can choose for a price with confidence that it will sell within a day letting you earn more than selling to high bidder. It’s not that much work.

Buttercup.5871:

… but so far it seems Anet is unable to eradicate the use of TP bots/scripts. Partly because of this, the playing field is not level. At all.

It’s difficult to get rid of TP bots simply because the TP interface is documented and as long as you aren’t dumb and add enough randomness and slow down the access so it’s within the realm of an actual player’s reaction time, it’s invisible.

Edited for clarification. I know the OP is talking about ANet automating the TP to set the price for each item.

Prophet.6257:

Buys Gems with cash and exchange them for gold.

Clarified.

Futures are different than shorts. Two entirely different things. zeibars brought up shorts.

Futures are simply the right to buy X of an item at a particular date. You buy and sell the contract hoping when that date comes around you paid less for the contract than their actual value of that many items on the market. When you hear about oil prices going up or down what is actually being talked about is the futures contract’s price (the one that’s coming due the soonest) going up or down. You can buy a contract on oil that’s due in December and that’s currently $102.44 a barrel for 1000 barrels. If by that time oil is actually $110 a barrel, you got a deal, it it’s $90 then you got hosed because the contract says you will buy them at $102.44 each.

Really it’s just another form of speculation.

Next thing you guys will want is buying on margin.

You run the risk that a significant portion of the playerbase will already be burned out when it goes live.

1st, for level 80 items it’s cheaper than they use to be, 30 gems per versus 40 gems per.

2nd, you now get one you can use for level 80 items for free now.

3rd, yes if you are complaining about under level 80 transmutation you have a point since it’s more expensive, 30 gems per verses 25 gems, and you get fewer free now.

Problem with shorting is that there is infinite downside which can be more than what the shorter has available.

For those who don’t know or understand shorts here’s an outline.

Player 1 wants to short <item>, say Unidentified Dyes, expecting the price to go down over the next <time period>, say a week. So they would borrow 250 Unidentified Dyes from Player 2 for a fee and a promise to return them at the end of the week. Player 1 would then sell those 250 Unidentified Dyes for gold. Now if their price drops, they would buy 250 UniDyes, return them to the Player 2 and pockets the difference.

Problem comes when the price goes up instead. Player 1 still has to return 250 UniDyes by the end date which now may cost more than Player 1 has.

Let’s look at an example with numbers. Say UniDyes are at 30s but Player 1 is betting they will plummet in the next week. They borrow 250 from Player 2 for a 3.75g fee and sells them for a windfall of 63.75g That means the price needs to drop to bellow 24s to make any profit. If it turns out they do drop and Player 1 can buy them at 20s, he ends up with 10g profit. But what if it goes up to 35s? First Player 1 needs 87.5g to place an order or 27.5g more than he got selling them in the first place. Even if they only drop to 25s Player 1 will be out 2.5g.

So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? Right now the TP simply acts as a escrow agent holding both cash and the item. You can’t do this with the short. Player 1 could simply sell off the gold to a RMT and never log in again. Player 2 would be hosed. You would have to have Player 1 establish an account in escrow containing funds well in excess of the value of the shorted item to cover the call. Too messy, too much chance for abuse.

The gem exchange merely establishes an exchange rate. This is very different than establishing a price based on the current supply, rate of supply and real demand.

And it still doesn’t affect top-end gear with very low supply rates yet very high real demand. These items will still have very high prices because any realistic system would peg the price so there are only enough buyers to balance the supply rate.

Owning Liadri is bragging rights. It would be like going out and buying an Olympic Gold Medal or an Oscar. So emphatic no.

Not directly. It just has access to more system memory now that it doesn’t have to share with other apps or the OS and that can improve performance of not only the game but any other app you run.

Lore wise that time has passed since there are bigger fish to fry.

Not lore wise ANet decided WvW would be better while the rest of the game focuses on co-op play where everyone is one big happy world where your actions couldn’t hurt another player even when helping.

If you don’t like flippers, then don’t pay them. Don’t sell to high bidder or buy from the low seller because that difference is price is what flippers live on. Put in sell orders and buy orders yourself, it’s not that hard to do better than what you get from when you mindlessly sell to high bidder or buy from low seller. Keep your gold, don’t voluntarily give to flippers if they bother you so much.

Okay I have two days to spend my 800 festival tokens. There aren’t any skins I want, same with most minis. Already have all the nodes for my personal space and the Balloon.

Should I get

8 Obsidian Shards;
2 Obsidian Shards and 2 Heavy Crafting Bags;
or along with a laurel
Zephyr Sanctum Model;
or Mini Candy Corn Elemental

Appreciate opinions or any idea that I may have missed. Note I’m not going to grind for any more tokens.

I picked up one. So soon I will have wealth beyond imagination! Bwahahaha!

What?

Nate Anabe.6091:

This is posted on website

“Note: Thanks to the success of the site, Gold Wars 2 has gone COMPLETELY FREE to use.”

But you still need an account to access it? No thanks, already have enough accounts to keep track of.

No. There are few enough players who don’t understand the TP as it is. Adding derivatives, no. Just speculate if you think the price will be going up.

Except the Terrace isn’t an instanced zone since you can run out of the barrier with no load screen. You are in the Crown Plaza in DR just as if you WP there. It’s just that you need the pass “equipped” for you to pass through the gate, simply having it in your inventory doesn’t count.

As for the complainers, open your inventory and double click on it. Is it that much of a hassle to make a big thing about it? It doesn’t hopelessly break it since it acts as a “free” WP to DR with 98% of the services in one place with both a MF and gate to all cities. And being located in a city you can free WP to your instanced area as well as the few services that aren’t there.

It’s the best 1000 gems I’ve spent in the game, used several times during a play session and allows me faster, cheaper travel than short cutting though PvP to Lion’s Arch in it’s heyday.

Zacchary.6183:

Behellagh.1468:

Zacchary.6183:

If they really want to make money, then they need to get rid of the Gold > Gem and then start putting more desirable things on the gemstore (convenience items).

Gold to Gem funds Gem to Gold. And if you’ve ever spent time looking at the Exchange Rate charts you will see bumps up in the rates every time something highly desirable appears, reappears or goes on sale in the Gem Shop which is caused by the flood of gold to gems.

To be technical, GW2 shouldn’t have either of them. It keeps potential money from going into the store and at the same time completely destroying any prestige a Legendary has. And despite what the white knights think, it also turns a game into P2W.

Having overpriced items on the store doesn’t help either.

It doesn’t matter if purchased Gems are spent in the store or not. The key is to get players to purchase Gems with cash. What they do afterward doesn’t matter. The increasing Gem to Gold rate is just creates another “item” you can spend your $10 of Gems on.

And most items aren’t overpriced. Perfect World sells their keys for $1.25 for 1 and $11.25 for 10. Our keys are $1.56 for one or $11.25 for 10. Their “outfits”, three pieces (head, top, bottom) range in price from $8 to $20.

Turbine sells their proxy currency at different price per based on quanity from $8 for 600 TP to $200 for 23000 TP. Armor skins in DDO ranges from 495 to 995 TP or $4.30-6.60 for the cheapest armor to $8.65-13.27 for the most expensive. Our full armor skins range from 500 to 800 gems for a full set or $6.25-10.00. Their minis are 195-395 TP each or $1.70-2.60 to $3.44-$5.27, ours $3.75 for 3.

Even in Guild Wars skins were $7.00.

Without spending anymore time showing you examples by point is, ANet is in the ballpark with their prices compared to other MMOs. Even more so if you take into consideration how easy it is for us to convert in-game rewards to gems.

Zacchary.6183:

If they really want to make money, then they need to get rid of the Gold > Gem and then start putting more desirable things on the gemstore (convenience items).

Gold to Gem funds Gem to Gold. And if you’ve ever spent time looking at the Exchange Rate charts you will see bumps up in the rates every time something highly desirable appears, reappears or goes on sale in the Gem Shop which is caused by the flood of gold to gems.

However the remaining free memory can be used by the OS as disk cache to speed loading of previously fetched data from the gw2.dat file as well as containing the other programs that are running on your system while playing without necessarily forcing the game to “share” system memory.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Where is that beaten mount pic when you need it……

You mean this one?

We have an explanation. The fact some don’t believe it doesn’t change it.

Brazil, well at the time I dealt with them, required that PCs were built locally instead of allowing them to be imported (at the time I worked at a company that sold turn-key CAD systems).

Also in my previous MMO I’ve found that players in South America were considerably limited in acquiring newer hardware at reasonable prices so they tended to run a “new” system that was several generations behind what we think is current and common.

Calae.1738:

I knew this would happen a long time ago. What I didn’t predict was them nerfing all the lucrative farming spots. It’s actually gotten a lot worse than I had anticipated. The rate of increase in gold inflation seems to be increasing exponentially.

On second thought, I don’t think Mr. Smith is as good of an economist as I had originally thought.

Inflation happens if too much gold is entering the system but as you pointed out, easy sources of gold have been nerfed. So where is the gold coming from? Is there still too much gold entering the game? That’s what you seem to be implying.

And before you say it, no gold from selling gems isn’t new gold, it’s gold players sold for gems.

Just checked a site I get spammed frequently by and it’s around $70 for a mere 1000g, World Cup sale, 10% off. Basically twice the amount you would get doing it legitimately buying gems with cash and running them through the exchange for gold. I think they’ve been following our rate lock step so they are always twice as good.

And while you may be able to whack-a-mole their advertising bots, you really need to go after how they are acquiring all that gold to start with and sadly I believe that a chunk of that comes from hacked accounts, emptied guild banks and the husks of characters from those hacked accounts turned into ad bots until they are whacked.

Mystic.5934:

isn’t there a perma hair style contract? pretty sure it costs as much as like 1000 single-use ones :P

There is, it’s just rarer than pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. Do they even drop anymore or what we see on the TP is all that’s left of a time that they did?

No, they are only available in the kits and the kits are one use only.

G210 is a very minimal graphics card. You are going to have to play at lowest settings, lowest resolution and even then your frame rate alone in a zone will probably not be that great.