Guild Wars 2

Thank you very much for this, it’s an excellent examination of the RNG in regards to the forge.

Squishy.3694:

Hi,
Here is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Are minis a good investment? I know many people are collectors and such but do they impact the market? In "13 I bought a mini polar bear and brown bear both aprox 80 silver. I just sold the polar bear for 2g. So i made more in one mini transaction than in two months of playing. How does this affect the economy I’m interested to know. Ideas?

Wait, you don’t make more than 2 gold in 2 months? How can that be?? I did a cursed shore run over the weekend in which I made 3 .4 gold in less than 40 minutes and I didn’t even farm the entire area. (honestly it was a test to see what I could get in a short amount of time just farming and fighting NPCs)

As far as minis go, I think they are a tiny part of the economy and truly cater to the collectors though if the Polymock has some form of payout/reward, mini popularity might spike for a short time.

I believe that cultural armor is soul bound on acquire and, I think, it will maintain that status even after transmuting it though I am not 100% on that part.

Your user name suits you…nice post, I needed the laugh.

Bombsaway.7198:

Crafting needs a nerf seriously.
Access to gear should not require crafting.
Access to gear should certainly not require everyone crafts their own.
Gear drops from events should be the best in the game, not crafted.

Crafted gear is supposed to be about speed and ease not access and power. Exceptions typically are tied to consumables and things you want stacks of (which is more of a ease and speed issue anyway).

There needs to be a major nerf to crafting.

I tend to think that the Ascended items were developed in order to give players the means to create their own, high end equipment AND to remove from circulation the enormous over-supply of certain mats. That material and gold sink provides stability to the economy and allows for parity to return to commodity pricing.

I agree that ascended weapons, armor and eventually jewelry should be sellable but the cost to build is huge and the cost to buy will be equally so. I have a Zoija’s long bow and great sword on my ranger. The cost to create these items was huge but if I built them just to sell, the cost would be over 700 gold to make ANY money. That’s precursor costs….who would spend that?

As far as your last point, the RNG drops do contain ascended and legendary items albeit at an almost immeasurable rate so you CAN get the best items without crafting them but it’s a bit like catching lightning in a bottle.

Essence Snow.3194:

The bandwagoning by those invested in relevant activities is obvious to the point where their bias is may be taken for sound basis of questioning their validity on such a matter.

If you’re going to argue the point argue the concept of controlling markets…not whether the 99% number is real. Arguing the 99% makes it seem that you cannot argue the point at hand and as such need to resort to focusing on something inconsequential.

It may just be that those that continually comment in these types of posts are indeed involved from one angle or the other. If you think that there is collusion happening, you are incorrect, at least as far as I am concerned. Both sides of ANY argument have a bias to their viewpoint. Your statement disallows the merits of just one side of the discussion without touching on the obvious bias of the other. In other words, both parties tend to work the angle to their advantage.

Since we’ve gone into the weeds, I will drop it…

Wanze.8410:

This. Thanks.

Anytime….thanks for doing the research.

LordByron.8369:

simple logic…
Do you see people trading any single piece of equipment? most lvl 1-79 except with the recent silk fiasco Always had low demand.

Even if it has any it just can t be controlled due to low demand.
At that point is easy to say few stuff is being successfully controlled on the TP….

How do you think gold sellers make gold?
I don t see many farm not around since many months ago.

P.S. no demand =/= low demand.
Epecially since the system is flawed by fake offers.
There are still many offers lower than NPC price.

You were just given a real life example, using real data that Wanze spent time and effort compiling and you ignore the direct truth of what was represented and came back with “simple logic” as to your answer of how you came up with 99%. It’s a bit like “well….because I said so”.

It seems you are angry with the TP and have an axe to grind with any logical discourse on the topic if it is in opposition to your own viewpoint. Despite numerous replies to your posts, well thought out and research backed posts, you continue with this fight despite the surmounting evidence that your statements don’t reflect the reality of the game. I am not saying you shouldn’t play devil’s advocate or argue for what you believe in but to me, the merit of your opinion weakens over time without some basis in real numbers.

The first thing I would remind you of is that this game is not real life. You have posted about insider trading as being illegal in the real world. Well, there’s no SEC here so that argument is kittening in the wind, the market decides what’s legal. ANet only cares if you use a bot to create millions of orders, buy or sell; they probably enjoy watching us speculate and flip and I would imagine a number of employee playing accounts do it as well.

Second, will you do everyone a favor and place some data behind your statements that actually has something substantial to it? You have made excellent points in your less reactive posts, well thought out and intelligent, use that channel of your brain, not the angry one.

And remember what everyone continues to say, you do not “need” the TP to play the game and arguing with those that use it is a battle with diminishing returns.

tolunart.2095:

Mistress Elemental.3750:

Not sure WTF is going on but in my last post I wrote "Bifrost that I made and worked very kitten (without the dashes) but for some reason it shows as “Bifrost that I made and worked very kitten”. Even when I edit it, It shows what I wrote…Forum bug???

Profanity filter gets a bit overzealous… like words ending in “T” followed by “its” even if your hard wasn’t meant to be sexual the filter sometimes turns it into a kitten anyway…

I’ve actually taken the tack that my posts will get “corrected” so now I use kitten, kittening, kittened in context since everyone knows the replacement. For example “I don’t understand why I cannot kittening use a dollar sign”

Sell it on the TP, match the lowest listing or go lower by about 20 silver.

mtpelion.4562:

Essence Snow.3194:

semantics……you know full well the point

Important distinction.

You can argue that you NEED food to live. You cannot argue that you NEED filet mignon and lobster every day to live.

When you conflate need with want, you reach the conclusion that the Trading Post makes thing too expensive. When you correctly identify needs and wants you realize that the Trading Post is your best friend.

This is a perfect reply……

Male 7 on my ranger

Autumn Man.6852:

That’s a shame. They should work on making the cultural armors cooler.

They’re dull and completely free of glow.

Charr armor is pretty cool. No particle effects or glowing but I personally think Charr cultural is the best looking out there. Is it worth 121 gold for a tier 3 set? That boils down to personal choice….for me it was.

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

mtpelion.4562:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Saying the TP is not required is pretty absurd imo… It is most certainly required if you want to accomplish even the most basic proficiency in the game.

I personally have no problem with flipping and speculating, but to argue that the TP isn’t required is certainly not one of the reasons why.

Personally I think there should be more skill based rewards, I don’t find it very fun for everything to be a show of how much money you have.

The TP is not required to play the game. It is a purely optional part of the content that makes playing the game MUCH more enjoyable.

If you are really opposed to the concept of free trade, you can play the game as a totally self-sufficient wilderness dweller. With that decision though, you will get to experience first hand why the division of labor is the foundation of all modern economies.

Note: “You” as used above refers to anyone who is opposed to free trade, not to the quoted user per se.

That’s like saying that hitting foes is optional to play the game. Yes you don’t have to hit foes, but if you want to attain a desired result most likely you’ll need to hit some foes. Some things in this game are simply not obtainable w/o use of the tp.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything that cannot be acquired outside of the Trading Post. Care to name a few?

Oh… and before I get accused of trolling, I’ll say that I do not play the Trading Post market, though I do sell whatever I get in game there… usually for the low request prices. In essence, I probably feed the TP flippers, but I’m not one myself.

You mean outside of gem purchases, correct?

This feels like a false demand item to me….I can retrait any time I want to for 4 silver. Is it really that annoying that we need a convenience item to retrait? Now, if it stored presets and would swap my trinkets, armor and weapons all at once. I would pay 1000 gems for that…..

azizul.8469:

anything but sylvari…

Hey now, don’t be a plant hater! I have a Sylvari ranger that’s awesome, well, I think so.

To the OP, Asuras are a ton of fun, the camera perspective on them is great for jumping puzzles and exploring but stinks when you are in the midst of the zerg since you cannot see over anyone. The next character I build, another ranger, will be Asuran. I have a necro and guardian Asurans as well. Asuras also feel like the move quicker than most races and I definitely notice a difference in NPC AI (artificial intelligence) with Asuras, they act more realistic, not sure if anyone else feels this way but fighting the Inquest seems tougher than equivalent level Centaurs, for example.

I find that Norns use a different perspective as well and to me, even if the pace is the same, a Norn always feels like it’s moving slow, plodding almost. And forget jumping puzzles, charr and norns are a poor choice.

I have a human Engineer and Mesmer, nothing to write home about.

Leveled 2 charrs, best looking cultural weapons and armor of any race, IMO. They feel slow when they run, to me, but they seem to be tougher than other classes.

Yargesh.4965:

doubt it. they did reduce the tonics though.

I have kept all the tonics I have gotten from chests over the last year…almost a year, I am up to 280. Can’t sell ’em……but the smell of tinged fur sure is appealing.

Jatacid.3725:

What cool stuff have you ever got from a jumping puzzle?

Several exotic drops from jumping puzzles as well as a fair share of rares. Nothing we do in this game will give us a million gold but the RNG gods do smile once and a while.

A fellow guild member has had 2 ascended drops from WvW chests…I did Arah last Thursday for the first time and got a very cool, exotic rifle that has a unique (to itself) skin, the Spectral Wave rifle….I will skin it onto an ascended weapon once it’s finished.

Could be a midnight purple with pitch……hard to tell. I do think it could be grape as well as it is pretty purple-ly

PvP or WvW has a lot of challenge if you want another avenue. Or, without knowing what classes/races you have leveled and taken to completion, try another class or race.

Jumping puzzles, which I am horrible at, are an award based task and some are nightmarish in difficulty. That’s a solo route and depending on your choice of profession and race, could prove to be very rewarding, both from “I did it” and from a “Look at the cool stuff I got”…

brittitude.1983:

Cassocaster.4576:

As far as runes going up 2000%, please provide an example of such growth (if I missed the actual reference, I apologize).

I believe that this is in reference to the Superior Rune of Strength. It is the only rune that has had any dramatic increase in price over the past week according to spidy. At one point the low seemed to be around 21 silver for sell orders and then about 3 gold at the max. Currently, sell orders are around 1.9 gold.

Thank you….

Just the 2 opinions I was looking for…thanks for your thoughts….I am going to keep an eye on it.

LordByron.8369:

Flipping is good for the economy of flippers.

Most of the gold they remove from the game ends up in their pockets inflating the gold value when it comes to any demanded items more than any possible general inflation..

Also helps Gold seller to proliferate.

But if we just look at general inflation its ok…..

Flipping is totally out of control and consequence of a lazy and uneffective way to fight the inflation since people with thousands gold are pushing prices on any demanded item…

The result is you can get exotic stuff cheap while having to give 644 gold for an ascended armor, 700+ gold for a dusk, 2000% more gold for a rune that was cheap few days ago and so on….

Per your own statement, flipper’s actions cause a result that makes exotic level items cheap? Isn’t that good for the average player? The rampant inflation is in the precursors, legendaries or an undervalued commodity. Do you get angry that a Maybach, Lambo or Ferrari is well out of the reach of the average person? The technologies that high end cars have spent billions of R&D dollars/euros/yen/juan or whatever currency developing have made it down into the lowest tier of car. Your car is safer because of that research that catered to millionaires. Would you wish that reversed? Just let the ultra rich have the tech? I strongly doubt you want air bags, ABS, traction control, crumple zones and other specs to be nerfed on your car?

If exotics are truly cheaper, than flippers have done a lot of good for the normal user, it leaves them with more alternatives. As far as runes going up 2000%, please provide an example of such growth (if I missed the actual reference, I apologize).

Obviously with the rampant speculation of gossamer’s usage in ascended armor there was a huge price spike and then a complete deflation of gossamer, lots of gold lost there, me thinks. Currently it sits 1.20S (buy cost, not sell, selling is at 1.34S) or about 30 copper off its’ all time low of 90 copper back in May of last year (‘13). Do people think this commodity can sustain this low of a cost? The gathering of the scraps isn’t forecast-able since it relies on the RNG drop rate, this seems like a decent investment to me, thoughts?

Thanks,

LittleLepton.8915:

Just wanted to guide you to this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/gf-left-me-coz-of-ladderboard/

Well, that’s pretty funny though I am not sure if my post is being blasted or compared to that one? Don’t answer, I’ll read it again.

First, this is NOT a troll post. This is a serious observation on this forum, overall. It’s not aimed at any one poster, it’s a generalization. It seems, to me, that the sheer volume of whining has gone through the roof.

As in:

My <insert class here> got nerfed in last patch so now I am not competitive.

My opponent’s <insert class here> is OP so now I am not competitive.

Flippers and speculators have raised the cost of everything so now I cannot afford to be competitive.

Grinding/farming materials is soooooooo time consuming I don’t have time to craft to ascended so I am not competitive.

People are rude in LFG or bias towards my <insert class and build here> so I don’t want to do dungeon runs or do WvW.

Map completion/ascended weapons and legendaries are all too hard to procure or build.

ANet ignore my messages regarding “X” and they should do something about it.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. For people who post legitimate (IMO) issues like buggy code or severe lag times, this post doesn’t apply. Consider this to be me saying, buck up and make it work or take a break. I love this game, the possibilities for game play are awesome as is the customization of my toons and the art work/maps. The game has incredible replay value and I have played plenty of open world situations that are so limited in comparison. All of my examples above are what I think of as frivolous complaining.

Are there issues with the game? Absolutely but we have to work with what we have, we are players, not the developers. Does it help to rant and get opinions off your chest, sure, I just think the volume of crying has gone way up compared to those posts that actually have something positive/constructive to say. This scares away new people.

Alright, ready your flamethrowers….3, 2, 1…fire!

My son’s PC has a fifty dollar GeForce that runs GW2 at about 25-30 fps with medium settings, the CPU is a Duo Core running at 3.3 Ghz. I hope it doesn’t take 6 months for you to get enough scratch to pay for a decent card.

Weapon kills and slayer titles are easy enough to get though I want to know who actually dealt 5K killing blows with a focus or torch…..

Abyss, Mahogany, Midnight Fire, Molten, Oxblood, Antique Gold, Pitch, Adobe Sunset

Weapons are worth it….I personally don’t feel that a 4.8-5.2% boost for the cost is worth it for armor. Weapons gave 10% so that was a big enough bump to justify the cost.

Cush.4063:

Flipping is the biggest gold sink in the game. If there wasn’t the tp you would be paging top dollar for other gold sinks. Think of paying 10s+ for a wp? Or paying 15s for a basic salvage kit? There are a lot more examples I could throw in there. Vendor prices would escalate. The choice is yours really. I mean how do you think the flippers get their items that they flip? They put in a buy order for a much smaller price and it gets filled. You can do the same. Clicking the buy instantly button is for convenience. Its the consumers fault if they do that. You can always put in a buy order for a much smaller price just like the flippers do.

Two words for why the masses won’t do this, instant gratification. Most people hate to wait so to those that don’t want to wait, you pay more. I am willing to wait….

Ralron.8124:

if people read the LFG description once in a while they might not get kicked/insulted as much

Fair enough…..I am just stating what I’ve read, I don’t spend too much time in dungeons, more WvW than anything.

I would imagine one issue could be bad behavior by either group founders or those that join. I’ve read a lot of complaints on these forums from people getting kicked from parties, being insulted by the party leaders or peers, micro managed. I would imagine you have more fun with people you know and I think ANet can see that too.

And since it’s an application, it’s probably buggy.

2 reasons for cultural armor…..looks and the achievement points, the latter being a ridiculous reason to spend 121 gold but when I get the title “Emperor”, I will strut that stupid Mesmer like nobody’s business.

I just bought a set of tier 3 human armor and I will immediately transmute it onto badge purchased rabid exotic from WvW as I can afford each piece….as has been posted, it’s rare and unique and because of the high cost, people generally avoid it. My Charr is in transmuted tier 3 as well.

Then ranger rocks….

Guardians and warriors are much easier to get into a WvW party or dungeon run with. Us rangers get shafted so I would continue on the warrior….

cafard.8953:

Sarrs.4831:

How would you realistically enforce a moratorium on speculation?

Easy. Any TP purchase becomes account-bound.

You can sell everything you harvest/produce/loot but don’t need, you can purchase everything you need, but nobody can purchase stuff just for resale value.

What?!!! This is one of the worst ideas I can imagine. Account bound? Okay. Play this out a bit. You buy level 25 food, bread even, for your starving thief. You buy 20 loaves. A string of good runs and suddenly the starving thief is level 35 but you still have 8 loaves of level 25 bread. Are you going to destroy that bread? You cannot salvage it so either you give it away, destroy it or take up bank space holding it. Do you see out of hand that could get if everything purchased stayed with your account forever? You may as well hand your wallet over to ANet to buy expansion tabs and larger backpacks (that you can’t sell because you bought them on the TP).

I say it a lot, I sound like a broken record, but the flippers and even speculators account for a TINY percentage of the transactions on the TP. The cost of any item (outside of luxury items like lengendaries) is driven by the consumer’s willingness to spend gold and the willingness of the consumer next to them to spend more for the same item.

People speculating the market, as Wanze stated, strengthen the economy by sinking tons of gold into the chance of earning a ROI inline with their predictions/research.

I have a roamer build (from http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/ranger-build-guide-wvw-roamerlongbowgreatsword) with ranger runes on knight’s armor. I swapped out muddy terrain for signet of stone and rage as one for Entangle. My trinkets are ascended celestial. I run PvE, WvW and dungeons with this build to great effectiveness. My pets are a desert spider and a snow leopard. It is a strong DPS with the great sword, a very good ranged (well, as good as LB can be) AoE from the bow and my spider (who also immobilizes) and a decent set of control and escape. My favorite build to date.

Flissy.4093:

+1 if the change goes as expected.

They let MF users when they changed they, they sure as kitten it better let Zerkers else there will be a right kittenstorm – especially since we have just sunk 300g into Ascended.

Um….not if you built Celestial Armor, you had no options for shifting your gear around. You just lost your magic find without ANY compensation. I had finished the set (which was a 30 day stretch since it took 30 charged crystals and those were account bound to one created per day) and had my gear maybe a month before they killed the magic find properties.

Glass cannons will always exist, are they actually considering removing the Berserker family of items? Does anyone have a reference of this change I could read? Thanks in advance.

I did a test sell last night, 1000 ore sold in minutes at 1.24S, 500 more a half hour later for 1.34S. The price growth hasn’t been reflected in ingots yet, that I could see. My ROI was 125%…not bad, wish I had bought more.

Buttercup.5871:

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.

Fair enough….I see your point and the other post is quite interesting as well as educational (thanks Vol for your input there). Being a programmer makes me suddenly very interested in what data I can mine directly through the gw api.

Vol.7601:

Romek.4201:

Supply: 146337
Demand: 584307

this is irrelevant on this item cause its palyermade and not real demand

Those are quantities on a per unit basis. That doesn’t help us at all because it doesn’t differentiate between 1 player wanting 250 ores and 250 players wanting 1 ore each.

It’s the only number I can produce for actual supply and demand…..I am sure the API may expose a way to see an “average” buy offer but regardless of who is ordering and how many, it still shows us how upside down the commodity is. And let’s also remember that offers require you pay for the item upfront so those orders have been paid for.

So, let’s ignore my numbers completely, in order for the buy price to hover above 75 copper, currently at 80 copper as I post this reply, an offer must be made at that amount in a very large quantity and paid for to lock the price for any period of time due to the turnover of silver.

What’s that number? A thousand? That’s probably just a few minutes worth of activity. 100,000? At 80 copper? That’s not speculators because the price would have to then reach around 1.25 silver to make it worthwhile. That has to be demand driving that price. People crafting and actually using the silver.

karma and badge bought weapons, trinkets or armor are soulbound on acquire

Ralle.6415:

I focusing most on roaming WvW or Spvp, full pvp. I like to be outnumbered for some reason
i like mostly 1v2 1v1 situations and i like when they got a bit survive ability and got a kind of escape. only thing i see at necro is that they only be condi? ive tried power but its not the same feeling on dmg for me. Why is it gonna be so hard to pick one. Ive levled a engi but totally worthless use of time as i dont enjoy it and dont want this to happens the same.

Mesmer isnt bad either they burst is one of the best ive seen but can mesmer be good in condi builded? like staff. And they dont get boring after a while becouse its just clones clones and clones?

You learn to appreciate the clones…trust me, they will save your can while leveling, at least they saved mine several times so far, I run a scepter/pistol combo with a staff alt.

As far as power with your necro, try dagger/dagger and staff alt. You’ll throw bleeds on very quickly and the AoE from the staff can handle distance, destroys walls and gates in WvW and has great range.

My current necro (I deleted my first because I chose the race poorly) is a power house, ’zerker traited with Valkyrie armor. She has an exceptionally high crit chance and damage. I threw a superior sigil of torment on the staff and superior sigil of perception on one of my daggers and the top end of my crit, buffed, is 79% while crit damage maxes out at 68%. Add to that torment (AoE) on the staff and the amount of damage my little Asura can do is ridiculous. A mob will crush me since a necro has no true means of quick escape though going into death shroud surely buys time.

Another thought about gold…..karma. Whoa, wait up you say? Well, there is an easy way to earn money from your karma. Orrian puzzle boxes. For less than 5K karma each you can get lodestones, obsidian shards, unidentified objects (sell to junk vendor for a silver for 2) and other rare items. These karma bought items are NOT soulbound like other karma items you buy such as Gavborn’s rebreather or karmic armor. I regularly buy about 100K worth of these boxes and end up with very useful items and always a refund of some of the karma I spent. It’s not the most efficient money maker but if you have tons of karma, this is an outlet for it. These boxes can be purchased from karma vendors in Orr only….

I would just start another toon…..

Having leveled 2 necros and currently leveling a Mesmer, the necro will be more capable early on. My Mesmer is currently level 68 with the aim being a condi-clone build but it took until level 60 before he could hold his own against more than 2 NPCs.

I feel confident that the Mesmer will level into a fantastic toon but for gratification I had a LOT more fun with my necros….

Romek.4201:

price already dropping

its just some speculator trying to push the price

Wrong. Look at this from gw2spidy.com:

Sell Price: 83 c

Buy Price: 76 c

Last updated: 31 minutes ago

Supply: 146337
Demand: 584307

Take a REAL good look at those bottom 2 numbers…..I see a three to one discrepancy there. That price is going nowhere but up until supply is equal to or greater than demand……and stop with the speculator hyperbole. They already bought the silver, they aren’t driving the buy price higher, this would be counter productive to making a profit on the item. EDIT: Please note that I said “Buy Price”, not sell price in my statement above.

One run on Cursed Shore, in less than an hour, can EASILY net 3-4 gold in heavy moldy bag contents, tier 6 gathering nodes (I know of 6 orrian and 6 orich nodes that are worth 2 gold alone), drops that salvage into high demand mats like silk, rares that can be salvaged for ecto (lvl 80 zone) and the overabundance of tier 5 mats like mithril and elder wood. If you are lucky enough to hit Melandru or the Arah run (or other events), your gold gain is much higher. I have 4 toons that can work cursed shore due to map completion percentages. My other 3 toons are into straits and frostsound so again, high tier nodes a plenty.

If you find you don’t have enough gold, try focusing on zones where the pay off is more reliable. Before anyone starts in on “grind”, I do not look at it like a grind in the least, I enjoy re-exploring the area when they reset the nodes, I like fighting solo through the whole area as it seems to be the only zone that PvE shows any signs of difficulty (outside of soloing a champ). Again, just my opinion…

Lesson learned, thanks Behellagh…..