Guild Wars 2

This listing fee is there so when someone offers something up for sale they are more likely to price it reasonably first rather than offer it for something high and then keep pulling it and posting it at a lower price, repeating until it sells.

If someone undercuts you, to bad, maybe your offering price should have been less so it would sell before someone came along and undercut you.

Geotherma.2395:

Aside from that you can get a stack pretty cheap off gem store.

Cheap? Really?

1 Key = 125 Gems = $1.5625 = (as of 3pm) 2g 63s 80c

5 Keys = 450 Gems (90 Gems each) = $1.1225 = 1g 89s 94c

I have yet to find anything in the 10 or so chests I’ve opened with free keys from drops to be worth anywhere near that IMO.

Wiki knows all.

Well at least this much.

If the highest price someone has a bid for an item is less than what the TP will allow a seller to post for, it’s exactly the same if there isn’t any interest in the first place. So as a seller you should realize that there simply isn’t any legitimate interest in buying that item, so salvage it, roll the dice at the MF or sell it to a merchant.

Not everything is flippable in this game’s economy (buy low and repost high). Sometimes it’s simply better to sell them off to a merchant, especially “fine” (blue) items as they tend to salvage into basics materials that are worth less than what you could sell to a merchant for.

Yes, it’s silly to allow bids to be made at prices bellow what the TP would allow sellers to post at. And I agree that these low bids should be flushed.

Perhaps over the very long term, as in buying and holding them for months. There is a designed in difference between what it costs to buy gems with gold and how much gold you could get selling them, possibly to prevent “day trading” of Gems. As of right this instance it costs roughly 2g7s to buy 100 gems while selling 100 gems will only fetch you 1g49s.

You would have to buy gems and hold them until the selling price is greater than what you paid for them and that time is neither soon nor even guaranteed. I would say nearly everyone would not have the patience to do that kind of investment long term.

Here, check out the chart at GW2Spidy, select all to see the history of sell and buy prices since early Sept.

Ubi.4136:

There is no need to let the botters back in game. A simpler and safer way of controlling the price increase is to make things sellable only once on the TP. You get a drop, if you need it use it, if you don’t, sell it on the TP. The person that buys it just made it an account bound item. This will stop the power sellers from artificially inflating the price on items just to make a profit. You will see prices adjust to the actual supply and demand, not the artificial ones we see now.

There is a reason the real world market is nearly in ruin, why do we want to keep repeating that in the virtual one?

Do you work for on of the console companies that want to crush the used game market? Or just some kind of anti-capitalist?

Account bound on purchase from the TP? That idea is simply crazy. It undermines the entire point of a free market. Might as well cap the selling price the way they set a minimum sell price at the TP (which is still too low BTW if you take the fees into account).

What I’m guessing here is the female armor in the game is now also pointing to the male armor model/texture. Something simply got messed up in the build. So yes, it’s nothing that CS can fix and it was probably already in the bug database by the time you posted.

Sadly these kinds of mistakes happen in MMOs, especially on larger patches that include added content. It’s human nature to check the new content closely but not existing content that in theory shouldn’t have been affected.

So unless they announced that Asura now only have unisex cultural armor, it should be fixed, eventually. However since it’s a cosmetic problem, it’s likely not as high of a priority as something that broke gameplay.

Yes it’s annoying because lets face it, it your character and you will be looking at it while playing and now it doesn’t look like what you intended. Sadly you will have to grin and bear it, switch to a temp set of armor or switch to a different character to play for now if the look is too unbearable.

Drops that can only be purchase at the Gem Store is done to introduce and entice purchases with Gems, some hopefully bought with cash since other than the game purchase, Gem purchase with cash is the only source of money to keep the game going. I don’t begrudge ANet for that.

I’ve may have only gotten 3 or 4 keys in the last couple of months, only through area completion chests. However I did find several more in BL chests when I opened them.

1) When the game went live the Gem Exchange was stocked with a Gem reserve and a Gold reserve. Transactions with the exchange with either remove or add to these reserves. This means that the exchange doesn’t create either gems or gold.

2) Gems are only created in the world, since the Gem Exchange’s founding, by player cash purchases. Unless these gems are sold to the exchange, the exchange’s supply doesn’t grow. If players don’t buy Gems from the exchange, the exchanges’s gold reserve doesn’t grow.

3) It’s the current sizes of the two reserves at the exchange that sets the exchange rate. Whether it’s a simple ratio or a more complicated formula, the current size of the two reserves factor heavily into calculating the exchange rate. The amount of Gems and gold that the entire player base has on all their characters do not factor into the equation.

4) I will assume that spending gems at the Gem Shop destroys gems, removing them from the world. It’s a Gem sink.

5) What’s unclear to me is whether the gap in the two exchange rates acts as a surcharge/fee or not, a gold sink. The reason this is important is if parity transactions are made, the same number of Gems sold and bought from the exchange so the amount in the Gem reserve didn’t change and if the difference is not a surcharge/fee, then the gold reserve at the exchange grows. That would introduce a small amount of inflation to the exchange rate. However if the Gold reserve at the exchange does grow because of this, at worse it only helps making selling Gems to the exchange more attractive sooner than later.

Coldtart.4785:

Nah man you should do Tribulation Rift Scaffolding or Skipping Stones. =D

2.2Ghz quad core, GT 640M at 1366×768. You should be able to find a setting that’ll give you fairly good framerate at that resolution. Still has a horrid 5400RPM drive but it’s $730, can’t have everything.

Actually I would like a filter for armor class. There is no point when I go shopping to see medium and heavy armors if my character can only use light, for example.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

“As a quick aside. Gems in the currency exchange are finite. You may buy gems with real money to your hearts content, but if you don’t put any of them gems into the currency exchange the currency exchange’s stock of gems never changes.”

“Think of it this way. The government can print as much money as they want, that doesn’t mean your bank account has access to that money. The currency exchange does not have access to gem creation. It has a limited stock that players add and subtract from.”

Both quotes from John Smith in a different thread.

Sound like there is a finite number of gems in the gem/gold market which directly effects that market.

But you can purchase with real money any amount of gems you wish. Until these gems are put into the currency exchange system, they don’t effect the system.

So it sounds to me as if the supply of gems is in reality infinite. But until someone puts them into the gem/gold market (exchanging them for gold) they will not effect the conversion rate.

The exchange has a finite amount of Gems it can sell for gold. This is what we mean by finite. It may have started with a huge amount of Gems, like a trillion but even that is finite.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Question I did have.. if gems bought with real money don’t count towards the gem total in the gem/gold exchange market until someone cashes them in and puts them into the market, does spending gems for TP purchases remove gems from the gem/gold exchange market?

Or is the TP market considered part of the gem/gold exchange market?

Think of it this way. There are the Gems that the player base has currently on them and there’s the Gems that are allocated to the exchange. Two separate pools of Gems. Only the ones in the exchange matter when it comes to setting the exchange rate.

If buying Gems for cash is the only way Gems are created in the world then it’s logical to assume that spending Gems at the Gem Shop is the only way they get destroyed.

See my crudely drawn flow chart.

It’s a way to get some of the high level characters to roam the mid level zones to gather.

Dynamic Events that are labeled [Group Event]. Duh! :p

Svanir’s Dome meta event for instance has two events that are group ones.

Usually any event that has some big bad or wave after wave of a huge gang of critters that would be virtually impossible to do alone.

I dislike any daily that forces me into content I have no interested in playing at the moment. Keg catching? Really? I know you would like players to go places that they may have out leveled or never really visited in the first place but to have it as a daily choice? And at the time and areas I play stumbling across a couple of players to do a current group event can be rather hit or miss.

I hate to say it but I miss the daily dodging.

Pure Heart.1456:

Which brings us back to the original issue, which is that we don’t know how many gems there originally were, are now, nor can we even speculate as to how many there will be.

Which means we are completely at the mercy of Anet who can tweak either the gem supply itself, or their algorithm to bring about their desired price.

Then it’s a matter of trust. John Smith has stated that it’s only the player’s actions at the exchange that affects the price.

I have one final question;
When players buy gems with real money, does the gem supply increase?

In the world yes, in the exchange no.

Pure Heart.1456:

This is exactly why I needed to post on this topic in the first instance;
No offense Ursan, but you are not answering my questions.

How did they create any gems in the first place?
How many gems were created in the first place?
How do you know Anet aren’t creating gems out of thin air?

1) There game, their gem supply.

2) All that John Smith has said is the exchange was created with a fix size pool of Gems and Gold that are allocated to the exchange, the ratio between the two is used to set the exchange rate. The pools are sufficiently large enough that market high jinx would be practically impossible for players. Gems are only added to the pool only when players exchange Gems for gold and subtracted when gold is exchanged for Gems. Opposite is true with the gold portion of the transaction.

3) We don’t but they say they aren’t.

The idea as described is as the exchange rate goes up, players who buy Gems with actual cash will be enticed to exchange them for gold and the rate will then move down. It’s just after six months we haven’t reached the point where Gems are flowing into the exchange in similar quantity as flowing out, thus the exchange rate has been moving up over the long term.

This sale on bank and backpack slots was simply so attractive to so many players that there was a run on the exchange, enough to spike the exchange rate roughly 20%.

You can search John Smith’s posts to find the ones discussing the exchange.

Me and two other mesmers were attacking a champion harpy in WvW that was guarding a skill point. All of us were using Greatswords and for some reason the kitten thing had a thing for me. I didn’t think I was doing any more damage to it than the other two. Thankfully I could drop an Ice Wurm to distract it every minute so I could but some distance between me and it.

Use to mean the stats got adjusted due to having your level adjusted because of where you are.

Mongo just pawn in game of life.

Wiki would know.

Depends if they put anything useful on sale.

I check out the long term price history at guildwarstrade.com to see if the price I put it up for bid was way out of line historically.

In my previous MMO it was referred by a dev as market PvP.

I never liked the idea that MMO markets are training grounds for day traders. I guess this is how Wall Street brokers relax.

Recently discussed in this thread. Includes a comment from a dev about the price difference.

Yes but the question is will ArenaNet allow a Gem card allocated to the US market be used on an account based in Canada (or Europe).

There was a time when NCsoft was very territorial with there games where games sold in and registered in Europe couldn’t use NA time cards or expansions and vice versa.

However if Amazon.ca is selling 2000 Gem cards for $25, which is the same price as in the US, both countries fall within the NA market and since the exchange rate is very close ($25 US = $25.62 Canadian) I would lean toward yes.

Personally I would drop support a line and ask them.

Yea but I’m betting they want to pull something saved for a rainy day out of the bank storage.

I think The Grove is the closest to port to and they, unlike Hoelbrak, have the bank, the tp and the craft stations nice and close to one another. You can always port back when you are done. It’s only a few silvers.

Since you said bags so I’m assuming you are a tailor. Leatherworker and Armorsmith can make sacks and boxes which are equivalent.

Wiki:Tailor:Bags

Folk.2093:

Citadel of flame; path 1

They’re talking about a specific dungeon path since each dungeon has generally three paths for explorable mode and one for story mode.

Thanks, I eventually puzzled it out with the wiki looking at the names of the dungeons and other high level events.

Going for scantily clad female assassin?

The dev John Smith (yes John Smith) who comments on economy questions states that the Gem Exchange consists of two extremely large pools set up when the game launched, one of gems and one of gold. Converting Gems to Gold or vice versa alters those amounts and it’s the relationship between those two that affect the price. If a lot of people buy Gems for gold all at once, like they did for this bag/slot sale, the amount of Gems at the exchange spikes downward while the gold reserve at the exchange spikes upward and poof, the price for Gems shoot up.

Gems are destroyed in the world when spent and only added when purchased for cash. In theory is as the exchange rate for Gems to Gold increase players will start cashing their Gems for gold, restocking the exchange a bit or outright buy Gems for cash and convert those to twink a character’s bank, also restocking the exchange.

At least that’s what I got out of his comments about the exchange.

Unless you like the look, there are cheaper and better sets out there. The combo of power/precision/conditional damage is prefixed “Rampager”. The Exotic armors with that prefix have slightly higher stats but cost less than 24g for the set. Downside, no slot.

Of course if it’s all about looks or wanting a slot, then it’s a moot point.

Because I believe they show you the Gem->Gold rate first and the Gold->Gem rate only when you click on the Gold->Gem button. It annoyed me as well the first time I used it.

I would be ecstatic if they would let me make a flippin’ redhead, not a blonde or brunette that have an ever so slight hint of red.

Design decision. Material horded isn’t material circulating in the economy.

Exchange was founded with two very large piles, Gems and Gold. These piles are fixed and only change when players use the Exchange. This pile of Gold is separate from the general money supply in the economy.

The ratio we are talking about is Gold/Gems. When you buy Gems the Gold pile increases while the Gem pile decreases. Either movement on their own would increase the exchange rate, those movements together will compound the effect. When you sell Gems the opposite occurs, the Gem pile increases while the Gold pile decreases. Again individually or together those changes will decrease the exchange rate.

As for the spread between Gem->Gold and Gold->Gem, what we don’t know is if the difference between the two exchange rates is a “fee” and that difference is destroyed as a Gold sink or if the difference is used to increase the Exchange’s gold pile thus forcing the exchange rate to creep up, hopefully at a rate similar to the general gold supply in the game.

It doesn’t really matter if you announce it before or not, somebody will always be ticked off because there will always be someone who just bought the item going on sale just before the announcement, if it’s a day, a week or no announcement at all.

EVE has PLEX, essentially a 30 day subscription that you can sell to other players on the open market. PLEX can also be converted into a different in game currency only used for luxury items and I think that exchange rate is fixed. However these luxury items can be sold to other players on the market.

Is your mailbox full?

goldi.3129:

Behellagh.1468:

Essence Snow.3194:

We know that supply influences demand. We know that players desire/preferences also influence demand. We know that there are numerous other variables that influence demand. Demand is not limited to one factor.

Honestly I’ve never considered that rarity in supply could increase demand and therefore price. I’m not all that into the “numbered limited edition” market of collectibles or pay too much attention to what the Jones’ recently bought.

It doesn’t. See Ursans example above regarding the non desirable precursors. Same supply as the desired precursors but virtually no demand. Thus low prizes.

Like in the real world if people ingame know that their potential customers are not willing to buy their products (no demand) the supply is meaningless.
As it doesn’t matter whether noone wants to buy 1 or 20 undesired items.

I know, I was just being ironic. The premise that rarity in supply can drive demand is simply silly. If there is little demand to start with, rarity of supply is meaningless.

Well you always learn something new, for me it was the Deposit All Collectibles you find in the Gear icon in your Inventory screen, only a couple of weeks ago. I had been porting to cities or the few outposts that had crafting or banks to deposit for months.

Everything discussed here is excellent advice.

1) Deposit Collectibles
2) Sell junk whenever you happen upon a merchant, armor repair or karma NPC.
3) Salvage salvageables for collectibles and deposit those. So always have a salvage kit on you. (Same is true with gathering tools. Remember that as you explore higher and higher level zones you will need better and more expensive gathering tools so it’s not a good idea to overly stock up on low level ones.)
4) Buy bigger bags. As your bank grows invest in bigger bags.

Now all you should have left in inventory is items, mainly armor and weapons. What I do is call up the Trading Post, O key, select Sell and sort by price. Anything greyed out (has no buy interest) I sell those items to a merchant (I do this step BTW while next to any NPC who will buy stuff).

At this point you should only have items that are actually worth something to other players. I worry about trading these at the end of my play session when I’m usually at a TP, although you can do this anywhere at anytime. Whether you sell those items to the highest buyer or undercut the lowest seller by 1c or set a price somewhere in between, that’s up to you. Just remember that the TP takes a rather large cut. So don’t sell an item for less than roughly 20% more than the items base sell value, sell those to merchants to eek out a few more copper. Next time you log in you pick up your profits (assuming you logged off next to a TP contact) and strike off again for adventure!

Personal note. I tend to open goodie bags rather than sell them. However I do sell unidentified fine dyes directly to the market. 15-18s is rather nice for a low level character since you can use that money to buy BIGGER BAGS. :p

5 slot bags are roughly 5c each.
Basic 8 slot – 20-30c each
Basic 10 slots – 7-8s each
Basic 12 slot – 25-30s each
Basic 15 slot – 66-68s each
Basic 18 slot – 2g 50s each
Basic 20 slot – 12g each

As you can see it can get rather expensive. And by bags I also mean sacks and boxes. There are three crafting classes that build identical items in terms of what they do but they are called different things based on whose making them. Also besides basic “bags” there are specialty ones that certain items will be placed in first and also ones that any item contained within them will not appear on any sale screen, so you don’t accidentally sell those items in a zombie moment. These specialty ones generally cost around the same price to a little more.

Essence Snow.3194:

We know that supply influences demand. We know that players desire/preferences also influence demand. We know that there are numerous other variables that influence demand. Demand is not limited to one factor.

Honestly I’ve never considered that rarity in supply could increase demand and therefore price. I’m not all that into the “numbered limited edition” market of collectibles or pay too much attention to what the Jones’ recently bought.

Is there an abbreviation/acronym guide posted somewhere on the forums because I don’t know, pardon I’m still new here, what the frak CoF1 is referring to.

otakucouture.9015:

AnotherNinja.8534:

9/10

Thorak Ironhand
Male Warrior

Like it! Though you usually see Norns with something more animal sounding.

My Norn’s name is simply Rodiniah

A good strong name.

Anchoret Wolfsbite
Female Mesmer

Gasoline.2570:

Base price is in anets control nonetheless. Price variation, to some degree, will come from players sure. Unless the drop rate is different, which is something we do not know.

You mean the 3s 96c sell value that Anet assigned it?

Again it’s Econ 101, extremely low supply + very high demand = very high price. Yes Anet controls supply but how common of a drop should an exotic aka ultra rare be? or chance of creating one in the MF?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I believe the Gem Store and the Currency Exchange are different. One you buy directly from Anet, while the other you make constant flows of exchanges at a floating rate via pots of Gems and Gold.

Yes I know but Gems are only created on RM purchases (via Anet or Gem card) and destroyed when spent in the store. If they are used at the exchange to convert into gold, they are added to the exchange’s supply of Gems. We simply don’t have any idea about the size of the Gem pool at the exchange and how much it fluctuates by, at least directly. We can only infer pool fluctuation by the exchange rate.

Redscope.6215:

John Smith.4610:

As a quick aside. Gems in the currency exchange are finite. You may buy gems with real money to your hearts content, but if you don’t put any of them gems into the currency exchange the currency exchange’s stock of gems never changes.

Actually it sounds like what you’ve described is an INfinite amount of available gem stock. Unless what you’re saying is that if nobody buys gems with real money, nobody ever spent their gems, and everyone kept buying them with gold, then the system would eventually run out of gems, there’s an infinite amount of gems.

No, he’s saying if you choose just to spend your Gems at the Gem store, then the pool of Gems at the exchange never grows. It only grows if you buy Gems with real money and then convert them into Gold.

However if the pool is significantly large, it may take some time for that reserve to run out. However as the Gem pool shrinks, the conversion rate goes up and it becomes more attractive to convert Gems into gold thus restocking the pool.

This would explain why in the long view that the exchange rate has been on a steady climb since the game went live. The pool is growing smaller thus the exchange rate has been steadily rising. At some point it will reach a level where it will be attractive to more players to buy Gems for real money and convert them into gold. We’re just not there yet.

After all the game only makes money on sale of the game and the sale of Gems. Those are the only two sources of income to keep the game running and I’m guessing a reasonable chunk of the game sale goes toward paying off the 5 year development costs, depending how much NCsoft let ArenaNet keep from the GW1 days. Now I’ve read that F2P MMOs are aiming at 10% of their active player base to drop $15 a month in the store to be considered very successful. I expect that’s the plan here as well. A rising exchange rate helps that.

Digging through some EVE data, PLEX, their method of converting real money into ingame currency, was worth 325 million ISK at the start of 2009, it’s around 500 million right now and I believe they use a straight up market place to set the exchange rate. So inflation happens there as well and it’s entirely in the players control.

Step 1) Realize that the gem store has items that you may want to get, more so if they go on sale.

Step 2) Slowly, over time, picking periods with favorable gold to gem exchange rates, accumulate gems using a small percentage of your wealth.

Step 3) Item goes on sale and now you take your banked gems and buy it, but without the Sturm und Drang of the unfairness that a rush to convert gold to gems causes a short term unfavorable spike in the exchange rate.

It’s simple really. There is a pool of Gems and a pool of Gold tied to those Gems. Exchange rate is calculated with a plus/minus buffer to give a spread. As players convert Gold to Gems, the Gem pool shrinks while the Gold pool grows and thus the Gold/Gem ratio moves up. As players sell Gems, Gem pool increases, Gold pool decreases, Gold/Gem ratio decreases.

Simple Eco 101, no conspiracy, no market manipulation, just a rush converting Gold to Gems.

They really need to add a tin foil hat to the Gem store.

Mystic.5934:

lol, they finally found what the majority of people actually want.
50% off makeover kit on sale = no change
quaggen backpack = 1% increase
30% off keys = no change
super fancy holiday clothes = no change
20% off storage space = 30% increase
I’m just a sad camper because I already bought full storage space months ago.

Shows what players want. In this case it’s actually something useful rather than simply cosmetic. Gee what a surprise.