Guild Wars 2

For the record, I think John is referring to an actual risen chicken in the game. You meet it during the mission “estate of decay” in the personal story line. You can’t kill the chicken until the conversation between Galina and Snarl has ended (Galina Edgecrusher: “That’s the most resilient chicken ever. Whoa – it’s coming right at us!”). If you do try to engage the chicken, it can kill you but you can’t kill it.

Lisa.6102:

John Smith.4610:

Buttercup.5871:

OK, I know this is in the area of tinfoil hats and everything, but in my experience, the results of the first BL key is usually pretty good. This got me wondering – because if it’s programmed like that, it would be pretty smart right? (you get the taste of success, so you continue gambling!). So I tested it, because using 25 keys at once rarely got me anywhere.

So, I used 1 key a day. Surprisingly, this netted me with consistent scraps, I’d say one to two full tickets per 25 keys. And if I didn’t get a scrap, I got another good result (e.g. an expensive BL item). It was slow, but at least I got my scraps. In this manner, I got at least twice as many scraps as I would opening many BL chests all at once. I’d really like to see the test results of others over, say, 25 days, but I also realize noone would be even remotely interested to replicate my crazy tinfoil hat experiment. Plus, this experiment was done before the recent overhaul, so it might be completely outdated information anyway.

I promise you, there are no secret mechanics involved in the chest openings.

Are you sure? not even if you stand in a less populated spot on a map like just outside the bank in the black citadel?

Sorry Buttercup , I just could’t help myself :-P

Funny huh. I think after testing 20.000 dragon boxes in 2 different ways I was allowed to voice that theory. In LA no tickets, in that place at least 2 tickets per 1k boxes (one time: 7). Consistently and without exception. I know that thinking out of the box is scary to people, but in MMO’s this made me a very rich man. From 2 years in Aion I learned server/area population can affect many things, including loot tables.

Black Scoutsman.5830:

Theres no way LA is being destroyed because that section of the map still has asuran gates to unopened expansion areas. Some of them even have portals with that red no entry sign on them. They wouldnt have designed that area just to destroy it before they use it.

What if those portals don’t lead you to something new, but lead something new to you?

If the buy orders are manually placed, i.e. without any third party click assistance, they are legit. In that case, though, we really should start thinking about buy order volume limits.

Thanks John. Never thought I’d get an answer on this from you, but I’ve come to trust your answers blindly.

For me too. I’ve not seen the TP behave like this since release.

I have never seen such candor and patience with devs in any MMO explaining what is essentially a change to a minor component in the game that only affects 5% of the player base, at most. Personally, I think they made the right decision and explained it well and were very honest what the reason was. Please let it go or, alternatively, be reasonable in your arguments taking the bigger picture into account.

OK, I know this is in the area of tinfoil hats and everything, but in my experience, the results of the first BL key is usually pretty good. This got me wondering – because if it’s programmed like that, it would be pretty smart right? (you get the taste of success, so you continue gambling!). So I tested it, because using 25 keys at once rarely got me anywhere.

So, I used 1 key a day. Surprisingly, this netted me with consistent scraps, I’d say one to two full tickets per 25 keys. And if I didn’t get a scrap, I got another good result (e.g. an expensive BL item). It was slow, but at least I got my scraps. In this manner, I got at least twice as many scraps as I would opening many BL chests all at once. I’d really like to see the test results of others over, say, 25 days, but I also realize noone would be even remotely interested to replicate my crazy tinfoil hat experiment. Plus, this experiment was done before the recent overhaul, so it might be completely outdated information anyway.

Yes, I think it is, but they removed the wooly item exchange vendor. Which was an (unannounced) oversight – causing a kittenstorm in the wintersday ascended drop markets.

Wanze.8410:

I dont know where your hostility comes from. The OP asked about what people think of the mini market and i gave my honest opinion based on my past experience.

Hostility was not my intention, but I’d be lying – reading back my reply – that there wasn’t some of it in there. I’ll try to explain some of the thoughts behind it.

First you say that based on your vast experience as a trader, trading in X is good/bad.
Then you say you have no experience in trading in X, and that it’s not your cup of tea.
What then, I wonder, is your advice based on? On information available to everyone – yes – but not in hands-on trading in the item itself.

I guess my problem is that your opinion carries weight – you know it does having caused quite a stir on the market with your posts in the past – but that you use that opinion on items in which you have no experience in, and which at times defy logic. Which brought me to the t2-t5 cloth example, where I kept telling people to use their head instead of blindly following the crowd and the wealthier investors. And the crowd, as you know quite well, will blindly follow. But as you know, that crowd will not sell right before a patch hits; they will hold on to it and lose out bigtime. You won, that’s great, but most of them lost.

So I guess I would have preferred that you questioned me on my advice in this thread – which even though it is based on experience can still be tested to see whether it’s really that solid – instead of giving advice to one person (read by 1000 others) that has no basis in hands-on experience in the item itself. Mind you, profits margins in that market are through the roof, and I mean really, through the roof. It was disgusting how much gold I could make on certain evenings when minis bottomed out; I mean, even with black lion skins I couldn’t even come close to those margins. Anyway, I’ll stop here. Take it with a grain of candy corn.

Wanze.8410:

I am seriously playing the TP for over a year now and i never thought investing into Minis was a good idea at any point of time. This market got screwed over too many times by simple bugs with the holographic risen knight, Scarlet and Caithe.
I invested a bit of gold when Set1 got discontinued but as mentioned before in this topic, the ROI over time is just not worth it in my opinion. Time restricted skins are way more worth investing in, if you got a couple of spare slots in your bank.

That’s why you bought buckets of gossamer, while I was buying the bolts of linen and wool. Seriously, how can you put such bold statements? I made over 500g in about 2 months just with minis by investing a minimal amount of effort and time, and I really mean minimal. As with any trading, all you have to do is study the market a bit and know when to buy, buy/forge, or buy/forge/sell. That’s it.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

No – next patch there will be a rare minipet that cost 20silver and can be put into the mystic forge and prices will crash again

Mmm mmm. This happened once, and the market corrected itself instantly afterwards. We now had a 2 months of rare minis flowing into the market and still the market corrects itself rather quickly. So no, that is false.

Wanze.8410:

Buttercup.5871:

Zeivu.3615:

It takes away from the event and holiday to be able to receive Wintersday gifts over a month past.

No. As with ANY event in the past, it is simply a cooling down period to be able to hand in the excess tokens people have acquired during the event. As this event lasted for quite a while, this is not simply a luxury, it’s a necessity. Additionally, people count on a gaming company to consistently apply its policies across events. I did, anyway, and I’m pretty sure thousands of other people did. Lastly, there was no warning whatsoever, as has ALWAYS been the case, that the exchange vendor would leave.

While Sonder still trades candy corn for cobs, he stopped trading skulls, fangs and nougat to their rare version when halloween was over.

Which was announced well in advance thank you very much.

To the OP: I made quite a profit on minis in the last 3 months through only minimal efforts. So I’d say yes, if you have the patience and some common sense, minis can be a stable investment.

Not all minis are the same though; as with any product you have to find out what you’re looking for – and when.

For example, the buy price of the gemstore minis is currently too low. It must go up because too many people already banked on the upper side of the market (exotic minis) to go up. In a healthy mini market prices go up from bottom to top. Which in our example means people will drain out the supply of the lower end (gemstore minis) since there’s profit to be made from forging them into overpriced exotics. So we’ll see exotics bottoming out a bit, and the gemstore minis going up until a new balance is reached. And then, yes, then exotics will go up again – all minis will – but they will drop a bit again when BL keys go on sale. Yea, Anet figured out a way to keep the upper end of the mini market prices in check – through BL key discounts

Even though I don’t think this gemstore item is designed for the current market but for the future ascended cooking market, I’d point out for completeness sake that dragon’s revelry starcake – a 30 minute foodbuff – sells for nearly 40 silver a piece.

Zeivu.3615:

It takes away from the event and holiday to be able to receive Wintersday gifts over a month past.

No. As with ANY event in the past, it is simply a cooling down period to be able to hand in the excess tokens people have acquired during the event. As this event lasted for quite a while, this is not simply a luxury, it’s a necessity. Additionally, people count on a gaming company to consistently apply its policies across events. I did, anyway, and I’m pretty sure thousands of other people did. Lastly, there was no warning whatsoever, as has ALWAYS been the case, that the exchange vendor would leave.

The vendor is ALWAYS up for a cooling down period after the event’s conclusion. This is clearly an oversight.

Bump. This is bugging a lot of people.

The vendor that allows you to exchange ugly woolen items (sweaters, hats, socks) is gone. No notice was given the vendor would leave; in fact, last year, the vendor stayed for 2 more weeks to allow players to exchange their woolen items.

This year, these items don’t have a vendor value anymore either. I literally have 30,000 woolen items still that need to be exchanged for gifts. Could you please reinstate the exchange vendor for a short period (1 to 2 weeks) to allow players to exchange their unwanted woolen items? Alternatively, could you set a vendor value to these items? I literally have to destroy about 100g in woolen items, which is really uncalled for.

You got to be kidding me. The vendor is gone? I still have about 30k woolen socks. Last year, the vendor stayed for an additional 2 weeks so they could still be traded in?

Speculation on runes and sigils is not smart. 99% of the speculators who didn’t invest before the twitch stream will crash and burn. Many have already. I personally pushed the newly inflated price of one rune into oblivion just because I still had a stack of it lying around.

hihey.1075:

I highly doubt they will nerf generosity in any way.

Even a low-volume item such as sigil generosity can be tweaked into nothingness; not likely, but very, very possible. Sigil of purity/nullification could also be changed to become more useful, leaving generosity with a lot if competition.

I guess all I’m saying is: don’t risk it. Mind you: afterwards, only the success stories will come out; the people who failed won’t advertise it.

Now I’m confused.

Celestial was already inferior, particularly when magic find on celestial was not replaced with anything else.

Now, it’s just a very time-intensive joke.

This also belongs in the dungeons section.

Btw very smart move on moving the zerker discussion there (dungeon section). Because that’s where it belongs. And it is directly tied to the OP’s post. His suggestion obviates the need for any changes to the zerker meta.

Nike.2631:

Funny, because the cure for Berserker is also the cure for this: make monsters more dangerous and smarter.

This.

The root of the problem is not in any given build or stat combo. They are fine.
The simple mob mechanics and the defense options make every fight too easy,
Everyone will always take the fastest route to get from point A to B. If the fight required it (to avoid imminent death), people would use vitality or toughness. But no fight does, so why bother?

Vol.7601:

Buttercup.5871:

If you’re dead-set on investing in leather it’s way better to invest in the one item that already contains heaps of leather (saving inventory space). You know, the only useful leather item which additionally contains time gated mats. Yea. Elonian squares. Way easier if investing in leather is really your thing.

That’s assuming that any future crafting recipes require the end result of elonian squares. If this were months back, it’s like suggesting everyone to invest in Gossamer Bolts since they are the end result for that mat tier.

I strongly do not recommend making the refined ascended component. At the least you should have the time-gated component (Spool/Lump). At the most you should have the time-gated component and the refined materials that would make the ascended crafting item, but do not make it.

I’m not saying make it; I’m saying buy it. And if the subcomponent (leather) shoots up, so will the final product in the end.

And regarding platinum: even though I think it is what I said it is, I won’t recommend anyone buying it. First because it’s just guessing; all of this is. Second, the more people stock up in advance, the harder the price falls. It’s not in my interest if people follow my advice.

If you’re dead-set on investing in leather it’s way better to invest in the one item that already contains heaps of leather (saving inventory space). You know, the only useful leather item which additionally contains time gated mats. Yea. Elonian squares. Way easier if investing in leather is really your thing.

You know Vol, while you and others were shouting gossamer I had stocked up on almost every cloth except gossamer. I had about 20k linen bolts, for example. People said I was silly.

I think platinum is going to be the next linen. Not as bad, still the highest one of the 4. Deldrimor ingots also need platinum. But the peculiar thing that makes platinum so special is that it is refined into 2 components, one for ascended weapons (dark steel ingots) and another for ascended jewelry (platinum ingots, presumably). Other than that, the ore pack does not contain a platinum node.

So yea, gathering platinum is easy. But so is silk. Anyway, personally I already have 25 stacks of silver ore from when it was 21 copper each. Same with gold ore.

Additional demand of 1 extra million here or there can be faked in a few clickies by third party programs.

Demand figures mean absolutely nothing these days. Do not be fooled by fake demand creation and removal. It can literally be created and removed by one guy pushing a few buttons.

So in essence people need a third party program to see through the deception.

It’s a trick to not show you the data on what they are actually buying and selling. I’ve seen this going on for quite a while now. Basically, you got to see the decoy – rather than the hustle and bustle around the next hottest products in town.
Similarly, it’s very easy to muddle up the data by, for example, increasing the price of silly stuff like “jug of water” by 300% to kick out the item you’re actually buying from the list everyone sees in spidy and gwtp. Because now, the price of what you’re actually buying increases by too little to show up on the front page of these websites.

TwinFrozr.6214:

Buttercup.5871:

Everybody and their mother needs 300 silk scraps per day. Most can’t farm that amount in one day. It’s a LOT. So the price will only go up. The price rise will stop once it becomes too expensive for the majority of players to buy silk, and an equilibrium is found at the highest acceptable price point.

I suspect that on the 21st the price will go down. But it all depends on when Anet implements craftable precursors (causing massive deflation) and in which area the next LS update will take place.

300 silk scraps a day? That’s how you explain me as nobody. I hope you aren’t serious about that. I’ve got all the professions, races and crafting disciplines in the game, and 5.650 AP’s so far. I’ve yet not used 300 silk scraps since I began playing GW2. So I seriously doubt that my mother, who doesn’t even know what GW2 is, would get any use of it.

Everybody and their mother. But you probably knew that already.

And I was referring to “spool of silk weaving thread” – the ascended material which requires 300 silk scraps to craft and is required to craft “bolt of damask” – of which only one can be crafted per day. You need either 24 bolts of damask (heavy and medium armor) or 34 bolts of damask (light armor) to craft an ascended armor set.

Which means that in order to craft just one light armor set, you need ten thousand eight hundred scraps of silk. “Fortunately”, heavy and medium armor sets “only” require 7200 scraps of silk per armor set.

If it’s a lot of money to you, I would not take a gamble: I would sell it. For sure.

Once precursor crafting hits, precursors will inevitable tank for at least the first days. If you really want a precursor, buy it then. Don’t gamble now. Prices are at an all-time peak now, use that. You’ll hit yourself in the head if precursor prices do tank.

somsom.5201:

People are too focused on old trinity mechanics of stat based dmg mitigation. Get with the flow: dps is a form of dmg mitigation, party utilities(ie non-selfish) are dmg mitigation. It’s like “peace through superior firepower”.

Indeed. That is what the OP was saying as well. It’s a pity most people don’t read his post in full. To recap the OP’s point: zerker doesn’t need changing, class balance is relatively fine as is. It’s mob mechanics and defense mechanics that need changing. In PvE, there is no real risk to choosing zerker over any other stat combination. However, ideally, it should be really hard to play full zerker and get away with it (while staying in one piece). If the meta is changed, provided not too radically, those that struggle with the new difficulty level of zerker can swap their zerker trinkets to survivability trinkets to avoid the need to craft a whole new ascended armor set.

The more ascended becomes the norm, the weaker the ranger will be. With half of the damage supposedly coming from the pet, why can’t I have ascended pet damage? It makes no sense.

For this reason, ascended armor and weapons are wasted on a ranger. You get half of the additional damage that other classes gain from ascended upgrades.

Very good read. Very.

I would only add (perhaps you said this but I missed it) is that the problem you identified is exacerbated by toughness being designed to draw aggro by default.

Essence Snow.3194:

juno.1840:

Vigorato.7951:

I find your example interesting Juno because in an efficient market you would expect exactly that to happen – prices to rapidly move so that the margin shrinks down close to zero. In that respect, flippers do increase market efficiency.

Great response — I went back and looked at my example from your perspective, and yes I have to agree! I still found the experience frustrating, but I can’t argue on the efficiency point.

A buy order fee would restrict what happened in my example, thereby preserving the inefficiency (or margin between buy and sell orders). I will have to scratch that off of my list of desired TP enhancements.

I’m still for time duration limits on sell orders (unless I can get an insightful counter point like Vigorato’s — something more than “prevents investments, figure the rest out on your own…”).

Ask yourself the questions: “How much does the increased efficiency benefit the market?” and “Who does that efficiency mainly benefit?” Then weigh the answers.

While we’re on the topic of “efficiency”, we should really be asking ourselves how much “efficiency” we really want. You know, with all those automated interactions that appear to be the norm these days amongst the major TP traders?
TP notifiers. TP scripts to analyze profit margins. TP scripts to analyze profitable crafting on the fly. And of course, worst of all, automated and/or remotely controlled buy orders. But hey, let’s just pretend that’s not being done on a massive scale. Silence is golden, right?

Please don’t mess with the guesting system unless there no other way whatsoever. Here, that is not the case, as the OP’s initial complaint is not even related to the guesting system. Frostgorge sound is a champ-train dominated area on nearly every high population server. It has nothing to do with guesting. Nothing.

Ascended cooking would be the most silly move in the history of gw2. Say “no” to ascended cooking!

And say no to people who are obviously trying to influence markets in which they have a stake (or steak, it’s more appropriate).

Awesome.

Wait, this thread is still here? Hahahahaha!
All is vain.

Sell everybody, sell!!!
Seriously though, wasn’t that the point of this post?

What you are like seeing is people creating hard liquidity in anticipation of the new patch. If precursors tank, you have gold to buy lots of them. If newly introduced “insert product X” starts out low, you stock up on those etc.

People are not anticipating a drop on ectos. If anything, ectos will go through the roof once precursor crafting goes live.

Naa, I vote for sushi. Ascended is more refined and expensive right? So sushi. Caviar and all that, all the way. Maybe throw in some expensive meat (Kobe beef, those cows are well fed and massaged when alive) and rare fruit (like coco de mer).

Trading on the TP is so incredibly effective because people use programs or “scripts” to do their work for them. It seems the majority of the “TP traders” uses TP notifiers, TP autobidders, and programs that will calculate the most profitable thing to craft at any given time. That’s the real elephant in the room that no one dares to discuss. Whole markets are off-limits because there’s simply no point bidding against a script who will automatically outbid you 30 seconds later.

Trading wouldn’t be half as effective as it is now without those third party tools to automate player interaction with the TP. It’s exacerbated by the fact that Anet doesn’t act against it and has remained absolutely silent on it during the last 10 months. In fact, automating your TP behavior is treated completely normal; a whole section of the official forum is dedicated to people helping eachother to write such scripts. For a “soft” example, see here.

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you farm 6 gold per hour then if the price of one silver doubloon is 2 gold, it’d take 83 hours of farming. Is that so bad?

Yes. Yes it is. Other than that your base premise of average gold/hour is wrong, it conflicts with everything this game wanted to distance itself from on a very fundamental level.

So. We have thumpers all over Tyria, creating fissures.
We have “fire” that is rising that you “cannot contain”.
And we have a Balthazar backpack incoming (as has been posted on this forum, on reddit and on wiki)

Now, Balthazar, isn’t that (amongst others) the god of fire, who waged war in the “fissure” of woe? That pretty challenging place you could only enter once you were Ascended?

Oh my goodness: yes please!

But I do not agree this could be a gemstore item. This is more than a convenience item, and it’s wayyyyyy too deep into the gray area of where the gemstore should operate. It will cause a lot of anxiety and anger from players that, for whatever reason, do not want to interact with the gemstore. I think this item is even too big to be a Living Story meta-reward, because it should not be a temporary item.

I think it would be better if you could buy the item from Miyani (at the forge), requiring a substantial amount of X, Y and Z. I’m mainly thinking of karma, skillpoints and laurels. Those currencies would make sense, as it would reward players who already heavily invested into the game time-wise – and who can now finally save some time acquiring ascended materials (dragonite ore/empyrial fragments) to, for example, boost the gear of their many alts.

I just received news from Arenanet support of its decision to kindly refund the gems for the temporary passes. So for my particular case, it’s case closed, and trust restored/confirmed (I fortunately have only had good experiences with support in this respect).

My regards to others who are in the same position; I hope your cases will be resolved soon as well.

Ascended armor eats skillpoints like there’s no tomorrow though. Twenty points per armor piece, I’m running out of skillpoints myself (admittedly, 2 legendary gifts took care of 400 skillpoints).

Yea I’m not too impressed as well.

Another guy, however, was serious about it, 10.000 gold in rare greatswords, with livestream, a detailed list of results and everything:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1tt1a9/stream_10000g_in_mystic_toilet_for_science/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1u1a7k/data_10000g_rare_gs_results/