Guild Wars 2

Suggestions:

1. Write a daemon to log to a database for the temple events so we know if the events were successful within 2 hours ago. After 2 hours, even though the event was successful, the temple would revert back to risen control.

2. Differentiate between US and Europe servers.

3. Since we can “Guest”, make it easy for us to query which Orr temple is “Uncontested” at the current time, instead of having us to click through all the servers.

poke.3712:

For information about when the event last run, somebody will have to make a database for such stuff (I saw some people already working on it).

Yeah you can create a daemon to ping the event status every once in a while and store them in a database, similar to how gw2spidy is doing this for the TP information.

Each website would have its own daemon which multiplies network traffic to arenanet. Don’t really like that, but if we can’t get datetime information from arenanet then I suppose we have to do that.

rodadams.5963:

You’ll have to look at the status of all the DE’s in the MetaEvent.
After the “Defeat the Risen Priest….” event, you’ll have to look for the “Defend…” events that happen later in which the risen reclaim the temple.

Again taking the Balthazar temple as an example, do you mean this?

{"id":“D1A02D5B-20A4-4923-A7A1-91852FE786E8”,“name”:“Defend the Pact trebuchets from the undead.”},

If we have the datetime information as to when the events were last successful, we would be able to find out the status (i.e. contested or not) of the Orr temples?

If not, then I suppose someone can setup a daemon to ping those events over time. Hope that doesn’t cost too much network traffic for the servers.

I tried that before but the information wasn’t useful. Take the Temple of Balthazar for example. The final event is:

{"id":“2555EFCB-2927-4589-AB61-1957D9CC70C8”,“name”:“Defeat the Risen Priest of Balthazar before it can summon a horde of Risen.”},

You can query the status for this event using:

https://api.guildwars2.com/v1/events.json?event_id=2555EFCB-2927-4589-AB61-1957D9CC70C8

Most of the servers show the status to be “success” but in most servers, the temple of balthazar is contested. Without datetime information, we do not know when that event was last run.

Can we use the Dynamic Events API to find out which of the Orr Temples are currently uncontested and in which server that is happening?

TheLaughingMan.4320:

If you believe that, I have some land in Florida I’d like to sell to you

Then sell to me, cheap.

Despite what you think the currency exchange does take supply and demand into account.

The gems currency exchange is already regulated based on supply and demand. It is good if gems are expensive as that would limit the profitability of gold sellers. Besides, you can always use real money for gems anyway when they are expensive.

When gems are cheap, I don’t feel like using real money to buy them when I can easily buy them with gold.

This is a duplicate bug of https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Black-lion-trade-filter/first#post1605941

It has been there for awhile but it is probably lower priority than other known bugs in the game, which is probably why it has been put off for some time.

On the other hand, it is a “low-hanging fruit” and should be very easy to fix since they already have it on their server side, they only need to update the search filters on their game client web page.

Shiren.9532:

One of the arguments ArenaNet used in favour of the gem store is that the ability to buy gems with gold (and vice versa) meant that players would be able to access cool things they added to the store even if they didn’t have a way to spend real money on gems. If gem prices keep increasing the way they are going, only the most hard core players (or those who are the best at flipping on the TP) will be able to buy gem store items with in-game gold. The current design is pushing players towards farming the game like a second job. People hate CoF runs but are doing them because that’s their best shot at earning gem content.

I am sure that they did not promise that you can buy unlimited amount of gems with gold otherwise they wouldn’t have kept just a limited supply of gems for currency exchange.

Furthermore, if the gold price of gem is low, I for one wouldn’t pay for gems with real money, why should I when gems are cheap with respect to gold? And if I can think of this, I am sure many other players would think of this too.

This means that ArenaNet wouldn’t be getting much real money and would have to pay their staff with peanuts which would cause the quality of the game to drop.

Also note that a large amount of the aesthetic content this patch is gem store content. There is an increasing disparity between the kinds of rewards you can earn in game (and a lot of them have intense grinds behind them) and the kind of rewards you simply buy. The non-gem players are increasingly being left out in the cold.

Well rewards are a different thing and I have my own gripes about the way ArenaNet does rewards in this game. But that is a huge topic for a different thread.

Look at it this way, 99.9% of the items in the game can only be bought using gold or other in-game currencies like karma, laurels, tokens, etc. Only a small percentage of the items in the game can be bought using gems (and real money of course). Why shouldn’t these 0.1% of the items be used to support the company?

A lot of the people who end up buying gems are spending more than a monthly fee now. To buy all four weapon skins, and lets remember than you only get one copy of each, would cost you more than $20. In WoW, with a monthly fee, these skins would be awarded as boss drops from the new dungeon instead of being sold in the store. The tunnelling tool, mining pick and the spring mini pets would be awarded as quest rewards from a seasonal quest chain. Instead ArenaNet wants players to spend $20 for four mini pets and they create a bunch of content that rewards nothing but achievement points (the same content would have mini pets or item rewards in WoW). The in game rewards are becoming increasingly desolate while the gem store content is becoming far more fertile. The tide is turning more and more in favour of the gem store and the value of your time in game vs the rewards you can earn is becoming a thing that this MMO simply doesn’t do.

Rather than a game supported by a gem store, this game is becoming a gem store supported by a game.

If those people can’t control their purse strings then so be it. Perhaps they are filthy rich in real life and they dont need to worry about money so why do you care?

I know that personally, your statement is false and that I did not spend more money in their gem store than I could have on a WoW subscription. And I am sure many more people are in that position too.

Most of their gem store items are merely cosmetic and not a must-have. This is why I have only spent a total of $50 in their gem store ever since release. I don’t know how you would equate buying a cosmetic weapon skin to paying a game subscription that is required to play the game.

Behellagh.1468:

We are being hit by monthly or twice monthly popular items that ratcheted the Gold->Gem price upwards, which of course either drain the gold coffers of players or forcing them to now spend real cash. That is a “good” thing since that’s what’s keeping the lights on but if you had been hooked on buying gems with gold cheaply is a shock to your system.
.

Yes that means that ArenaNet is becoming smarter in making us part with our money, which is why people who are used to the easy cheap deals of buying gems with gold are now complaining.

You can’t, in good conscience, say that ArenaNet is wrong to start introducing items in their gem store that people would want to buy. That has always been their goal in the first place, and if I am ArenaNet I would say well done and keep up the good work.

Having a high gold price for gems is good for ArenaNet because:

1. It edges out profit margins of gold sellers.

2. It encourages players to spend more real money on the gem store.

Both of these points are good for ArenaNet, so why should they stop and go the opposite way? I have not heard any good justification why they should stop besides the understandable and usual player-selfish reasons of having the best deal for themselves regardless of the needs of the economy or the company. Futhermore, it is not like ArenaNet never have discounts on promotional items.

Lane.3410:

DarkSpirit.7046:

I don’t think it would ever be out of reach, since you can always use real money.

Which is why I specifically said “for gold”. Not everyone has the disposable RL income for gem store purchases.

One of the great things about GW2 in addition to no subscription fee was you didn’t need to have RL $ to buy things, you could use gold. Both items were draws to those who lack the excess funds to spend on a video game. However, at some point the only people who are going to have enough gold will be the TP traders and CoF runners.

I would give you one guess why this game doesn’t have a subscription in the first place.

If the price of gems is too high, it is only because too many people have already bought them using gold, so the system balanced the currency exchange up. The system is working as intended.

Lane.3410:

If they sell the sickle and axe at the same time the gem exchange will become outrageous.

I know the goal is to get people to spend RL $ on gems, but I feel at some point even the occasional gem store purchase for gold is going to become out of reach for the average player.

I don’t think it would ever be out of reach, since you can always use real money.

Good. The higher it goes, the tighter the squeeze on the profits of gold sellers.

Agree. Also it would be nice if we can search by back pieces, skins, armor weight or stats too as a search filter.

When I view the sell or buy listings and if I have a pending buy or sell request, then I would like the line with my buy/sell price to be highlighted so it would be clear to me how many orders have undercut mine and by how much.

I would also prefer 2 separate buttons per items to view the buy and sell listings of the item, so I don’t have to pretend to buy or sell just to view the listings.

Also having a column for minimum crafting cost or profit (like in gw2spidy), if it is a craftable item, would be nice. Adding mystic forge recipes into the mix too would be even better.

Mystic.5934:

DarkSpirit.7046:

You can write your own app to interface with the TP, so I don’t really care about the in-game interface.

I suppose this doesn’t have to be a bot. But that’s not how I read it at first. It sounded like you were suggesting to the OP to use a bot to side-step the trading post’s UI. Sorry for the confusion
It’s possible to write your own interface to the TP that can place buy and sell orders???
I would trade my Asura’s left ear for the ability to modify that UI.

Then your mind has totally gone out-of-topic. I have only been talking about how to create a better user interface for the TP all that time. It is you who suddenly brought up bots. I am not going to discuss bots on this thread because that is completely out of topic and I don’t wish to hijack a worthy thread on improving the TP user interface.

You can write an app to use ArenaNet’s TP web api and improve the user interface that way. I would welcome any feedback on how to improve the TP UI.

Mystic.5934:

that tool and things like spidy, sure. those just tell you when something is a good buy, then you go buy it. it’s the automated buying and selling I thought was bannable.
like have it set to monitor the price of all items, and when the buy order price gets below 50% of the sell listing price, it places a buy order for the current buy order + 1. no human need play.
that’s what it sounded like to me he is suggesting
what Zicore takes advantage of is just the knowledge of the current market price and reports it to the player when certain criteria are met, then it’s up to the player to act on it.
with a bot, you could place 1000 buy orders per minute. a human can only do maybe 10.

Look at the title of this thread, are we talking about using a bot now or have we been talking about making a better user interface for the TP? I want to make sure that you are not suddenly changing the topic on me.

I guess we are in agreement then. Until we have an official statement from ArenaNet stating otherwise, it is not a bannable offense to use their web API to interface with their TP.

Mystic.5934:

DarkSpirit.7046:

You can write your own app to interface with the TP, so I don’t really care about the in-game interface.

As I understand it, this is against the ToS. I thought there needs to be an actual human entering the commands, otherwise it’s just a bot. Not likely to get caught, but still a bot and possible to get banned.

That is a common myth. ArenaNet has plans to release an API to their TP which is why their TP goes through a web interface by design. There are other non-web based encrypted channels from the GW2 client to their server, which they could have used if they wanted to.

Furthermore, many players have created and advertised their tools on this very forum without getting banned so obviously they allow it. For example:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Zicore-s-Trading-Post-Notifier-Open-Source/page/2#post1605970

So until ArenaNet has an official statement about such tools, we are free to use their web API which has not been officially released yet. In other words, everyone knows that they have an API and they can easily block us if they want to but obviously they choose not to at the moment. It is not like we are hiding our actions in the shadows or anything.

You can write your own app to interface with the TP, so I don’t really care about the in-game interface.

Mourningcry.9428:

I took a look at his other puplished “papers” he links to at the top of that article… well, suffice to say, from a brief browse, would have to agree with Ensign. Not to mention the “papers” aren’t really up to academic or research standards.

For example:
http://gameful.org/group/games-for-change/forum/topics/gold-selling-in-guild-wars-2

He may be a gaming industry professional, but there’s not a lot in his on-line persona or Linked-In profile to suggest he’s an “economist”.

Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

I wonder why some of you are so hung up on economic semantics as if out of hubris. It is not like our current theory of economics is that perfect anyway.

I am not belittling economics here but I believe that our current theories of economics are sorely incomplete. I quote what Dr. David Suzuki said:

Remember that we are only one of perhaps 30 million species on the planet. Yet we only measure economic value by how useful something is for us. If we can find ways to make a buck on a natural “resource” that’s all we need to exploit it.

We pay little attention to the incredible complexity and interdependence of components of ecosystems of which we, as biological beings, remain a part. And we have almost no idea what the consequences of a vast human population making enormous demands will have on the biosphere.

In economics, the bottom line is profit.

Judith Maxwell, president of the Economic Council of Canada, admitted in an interview that economists simply haven’t paid attention to ecological factors. Economists consider the environment to be essentially limitless, endless, self-renewing and free.

As the eminent Stanford ecologist, Paul Ehrlich remarked: “Economists are one of the last groups of professionals on earth who still believe in perpetual motion machines.”

But the fact is, we live in a finite world, human beings are now the most numerous large mammal and our numbers are increasing explosively. Our technological inventions permit extraction of resources at a horrifying rate. To economists, this simply offers greater opportunity to expand markets and increase profit.

In economics, the role performed by components of natural communities is of no importance. So, for example, a standing forest provides numerous ecological “services” such as inhibition of erosion, landslides, fires and floods while cleansing the air, modulating climate and weather, supporting wildlife and maintaining genetic diversity. And I haven’t even considered the spiritual value of forests for human beings.

Yet to economists, these are “externalities” to their calculations. As the head of a multinational forest company remarked, “a tree has value once it’s cut down.” That’s a classic economic perspective.

Economists live in a land of make-believe. They aim at steady growth in consumption, material goods, wealth and profit as if it can be sustained indefinitely. And they have faith that human ingenuity will open up new frontiers for steady expansion while providing endless solutions to problems we create.

Having said that, a virtual economy is probably more applicable to current economic theories than an actual one is.

The Gamasutra article by Ramin Shokrizade puts it very well.

Real world economies involves the careful distribution of finite resources to the population to maximize societal productivity. In the real world, resources start off in abundance (especially things like air and water) and become more scarce over time. In order to simplify the math, many economists pretend that things like air and water are infinite, but clearly they are not, and clean air and water can quickly become scarce if these resources are abused on an extraordinary scale.

Virtual economies are upside down from “real” economies, and this causes many conventional economists to come to false conclusions when evaluating these environments. In a virtual world the economy starts with little (if a seed is provided) or no (more typical) resources and all economic currencies increase rapidly over time, approaching infinity if the world is not properly designed with resource sinks that dynamically remove resources from the environment at roughly the rate they are created.

Ensign.2189:

The pre-end game economy is almost entirely junk. People leveling up their crafting professions craft and dump a lot of junk on the auction house, and people leveling their characters find ways to power level while being equipped almost entirely in said junk.

GW2 is unique in that people spam crafting professions onto their characters just for the XP it gives; it’s a great way to power level and skip to the end game, and tons of people take advantage of it. Crafting low level gear is poor from a gold -> craft -> gold perspective, but is excellent from a gold -> craft -> XP! perspective.

All that said, I think the GW2 pre-endgame economy is poorly designed. By dividing materials into tiers, A.Net ensured that pre-endgame drops will not retain any value in the long run; demand for pre-T5 materials is driven almost entirely by people using crafting to level alts. Outside of that, the only value any pre-T5 material has is its merchant value – as that is the only way such items can be converted into a resource, gold, that has any value at 80.

There’s essentially no way out of this now, but it was an incredibly shoddy design and a pretty big blemish on the game’s reward system.

I agree with Ensign. But many GW2 gamers that I know, just rush through the doldrums of pre-endgame levels so they dont stay there for long to appreciate that.

What is more disturbing to me, having hit level 80 on all my characters is that I agree with his last comments: "The strength of the game play keeps players going for a while but every player I interviewed told me that “there just was something missing”. I would suggest that something was effective reward mechanisms.

Since the GW2 business model seems dependent on tapping a sustainable economy for continuous revenue, it seems logical that they would have wanted to build a sustainable economy into their game. They even hired a conventional economist late in the development cycle, implying that they realized that this was important to the product success. Unfortunately, this seems to have been too little, too late.

While the gameplay seems to have benefited from a “how can we do this better than has been done before”, the reward system in the game seems to be at best business as usual.

The hosts have announced that they will be revamping the reward system later this year, so they seem to be aware that they have a problem. I am eager to see what they come up with. "

Their endgame reward system is flawed and while they do put in an effort on introducing new content, character development and progression pretty much ends abruptly at level 80.

I have been playing the same static characters for months now. They look the same and have not become any stronger, even in any remote PvE-only way. This is getting boring fast.

The irony is that endgame reward system is what GW1 does very well, even though it has a much earlier level cap of 20. You can continue to get cool PvE-only skills, or progress your characters through Lightbringer, Slayers, or the other lines. These lines of progression only give minimal rewards but they still give a sense of progression to your characters (being PvE-only is fine too) after max level.

ArenaNet badly needs to spread their ascended back items more. Right now we can only get these by playing FOTM. If you happen to not like Fractals, then you would never ever own an ascended back piece. So much for playing the game the way you want it…

I am just glad that I sold mine when they were in the 40s.

Bahamut.5928:

Also they should implement some kind of search for back items, its pretty ridiculous searching for them at the moment

Their server already supports a back item search, but they have not updated the search filters on their web page.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Black-lion-trade-filter/first#post1605941

OmniPotentes.4817:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Calae.1738:

Why is it that they design a system that makes the customer roll dice for a chance to get what they want? The store keeps our money even if we don’t get what we want.

And that is the point. This way, 1. they get to keep your money no matter what, and 2. they don’t flood the economy with valuable luxury goods.

2 for the price of 1, how can ArenaNet lose?!

To put it simply, it makes sense for ArenaNet to have this because it works so much to their favor. I am not saying that I like it from a customer’s perspective, but it is obvious to me why they would choose this route.

The problem with this route is that it only works for a short period of time. People catch on and move along.

I disagree, many people would still go along with it no matter the complaints so long as they can see that there is a winner.

That is the psychology that lottery advertisers have been applying for decades. “The next winner could be you!” Even though there is a very high chance that it won’t be you, the human brain doesn’t take that into account very well.

Calae.1738:

Why is it that they design a system that makes the customer roll dice for a chance to get what they want? The store keeps our money even if we don’t get what we want.

And that is the point. This way, 1. they get to keep your money no matter what, and 2. they don’t flood the economy with valuable luxury goods.

2 for the price of 1, how can ArenaNet lose?!

To put it simply, it makes sense for ArenaNet to have this because it works so much to their favor. I am not saying that I like it from a customer’s perspective, but it is obvious to me why they would choose this route.

As long as it enhances the game experience and bring more people into the game, that is a good thing to have. Just because bots may exploit this does not mean that, we wave the white flag, and have to give up on providing a better gaming experience for players. ArenaNet knows ways of dealing with the bots.

Having the ability to trade using mobile devices would create more “mind share” for guild wars 2 so it is good for the game. We shouldn’t let the threat of bots deter ArenaNet’s innovations and plans to improve the game.

Whenever that happens to me I find that the server returns a 502: Bad gateway error. I can’t say for sure if your issue is the same as mine but if it is, then it is probably a problem on the server side, not your client.

http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E502.html

If you still encounter issues, you can see if you can login to the TP using your default browser and see if that works for you:

https://account.guildwars2.com/login?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Ftradingpost-live.ncplatform.net%2Fauthenticate%3Fsource%3D%252F&game_code=gw2

…this should test some client settings.

Ursan.7846:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Ursan.7846:

I’m lazy.

Lol! I knew you would give that excuse when I challenged you to prove yourself.

You also knew this beforehand because I clearly stated the same thing earlier in the thread. Good job disregarding the rest of my post however. I’m glad that we could agree on your lack of understanding of the concept of statistics.

If you ask for feedback then I wish to know whether the salvages are done at the same time and place. If you are not interested to answer questions and instead try to force your conclusions down everyone’s throat, because you think you know everything, then I can’t help you.

Ursan.7846:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Ok, since you brought it up first, then justify, with statistical calculations, why you think the number 200 is enough to prove that BLSK would give more ectos. All I see from you so far is a lot of taunts but no math.

I’m lazy.

Lol! I knew you would give that excuse when I challenged you to prove yourself.

The experiments are not done in a consistent setting because they assume that the random number generator does not take datetime into account.

Syeria.4812:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Ursan.7846:

DarkSpirit.7046:

And we are saying that 200 may not be enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor. I won’t be surprised if someone repeats this little experiment and come up with the opposite conclusion after just 200 salvages.

Hahahahahahaha

Wait what? Is 201 be large enough to account for the “luck” factor? 202? 300? 400? What arbitrary number do you think is enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor, I’m curious?

Though I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, the way you worded it makes it seem like you fail to grasp the concept of statistics.

Ok, since you brought it up first, then justify, with statistical calculations, why you think the number 200 is enough to prove that BLSK would give more ectos. All I see from you so far is a lot of taunts about how well you know statistics compared to me but no math to prove it.

There may be other factors that can affect the rate. For example, are the salvages done, with different kits, at exactly the same time and place?

I see your grasp of the concept of “first” is as poor as your understanding of statistics. As for your nonsensical demand:

Ensign.2189:

So the reason I’m pressing for standard deviation data is to calculate standard errors. When you know the standard errors of multiple samples of the same distribution, you can combine that data using inverse-square error weighting to get a joint distribution with an even smaller standard error.

To wit, at 95% confidence:

Black Lion Salvage Kit:
Syeria: 1.253 +/- 0.163
Geotherma: 1.285 +/- 0.1442
Joint: 1.271 +/- 0.108

Master Salvage Kit:
Syeria: 0.889 +/- 0.081
Geotherma: 0.93 +/- 0.1148
Joint: 0.903 +/- 0.0662

Obviously more data always helps, but their data combined is starting to look pretty robust, especially for the Master Salvage Kit case.

To follow that up we have:

Ensign.2189:

Updated bounds with Geotherma’s 2nd set of data (600 points total):

Black Lion Kit: 1.241 +/- 0.084
Master Kit: 0.891 +/- 0.066

Both at 95% confidence.

Imagine that, the people who declared (completely without any basis after having demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of any statistical concept) that any data they didn’t like “isn’t a big enough sample” turned out to be wrong.

You are still avoiding my question. Did you perform the salvages at exactly the same time and place across both kits?

Ursan.7846:

DarkSpirit.7046:

And we are saying that 200 may not be enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor. I won’t be surprised if someone repeats this little experiment and come up with the opposite conclusion after just 200 salvages.

Hahahahahahaha

Wait what? Is 201 be large enough to account for the “luck” factor? 202? 300? 400? What arbitrary number do you think is enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor, I’m curious?

Though I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, the way you worded it makes it seem like you fail to grasp the concept of statistics.

Ok, since you brought it up first, then justify, with statistical calculations, why you think the number 200 is enough to prove that BLSK would give more ectos. All I see from you so far is a lot of taunts about how well you know statistics compared to me but no math to prove it.

There may be other factors that can affect the rate. For example, are the salvages done, with different kits, at exactly the same time and place?

Regardless of the trust issue, some people would still try this. Why? Because the current game design encourages this. As the prices of legendaries and precursors shoot up towards infinity, by passing the TP fees becomes more and more lucrative.

Syeria.4812:

Is 200 data points enough to prove Black Lion kits produce higher ecto per salvage results? Maybe, maybe not. I haven’t done the math to calculate the proper sample size to determine significance at 5% for these. However, I’d be shocked if the requisite sample size for determining solely that Black Lion kits have a better salvage rate (rather than determining what that rate is, simply qualifying that Black Lion are “better” than Master/Mystic) was more than a few hundred. When you add these data to any other set that has been tracked, it’s almost certain that the results are statistically significant.

And we are saying that 200 may not be enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor. I won’t be surprised if someone repeats this little experiment and come up with the opposite conclusion after just 200 salvages.

This is why, the way the game is currently implemented, I am never going for a legendary, unless I have so much gold that I could just buy a precursor outright.

Iruwen.3164:

I’d say that too. And then I’m gonna rip you off so hard, you’re gonna quit playing and never want to start playing anything again.

You can’t rip me off if you have not earned my trust and my trust is not easy to earn.

Whether someone wants to use a third party or not is still voluntary. If he doesn’t want to take the risk, who can force him otherwise?

Furthermore, if an organization is setup for broker trading, if it is not run well, then bad reputation would hurt its business and people would avoid dealing with them. This is the internet age afterall where information spreads quickly. If the organization is run well, then the leader should be able to sieve out scammers like that to an extent.

Lastly, even if I totally agree with you, there is nothing we can do if someone else decides to setup such an organization, unless ArenaNet steps in to prevent that. It is not our call as we don’t have the powers to stop them. So there is really nothing to gain convincing me one way or another. If you feel strongly about this, you should talk to someone in ArenaNet. The OP is not the first guy who thought of bypassing the TP fees and he certainly wont be the last.

Ian Smith.8690:

Ah, I finally see the flaw in your thinking. You believe the ignorant are in the minority. Based on experience in this game, WoW, DCUO, PoE and many others that I haven’t played as much, ignorance is the majority of players. Most people don’t come to play a game with the thought of having to do a bunch of research just to play it. They are here for fun, not work. While you may get great joy in hoarding money, real or virtual, most people in the real world would love to never have to ever think about money. I feel it’s one of the last things on people’s minds when they come to a game unless they just can’t acquire enough of it to play the game.

Ok, granted that no one has actually done a scientific survey on the maturity of the player population, we can’t say that it is a minority or a majority. But still I prefer the game to provide options for players to make informed decisions than the game to have limited options just to protect the stupid.

Playing a game for fun doesn’t mean you lose your brains. I enjoy puzzle games myself. Besides this game is already designed in a way that you would have to do calculations, otherwise you can stand to lose money (e.g. mystic forge formulae, vendor prices vs tp prices with tp taxes, calculate break even prices before overbidding/undercutting, etc.) Yes you can still choose to play the game stupidly and promote all your T5 mithril ore to T6 through the mystic forge for example, just don’t cry to the forums if you lose your gold.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Well, I guess there is some harm in trying. I suppose there’s not a lot of harm done with a few folks doing an occasional brokered trade, but organizing some sort of network to help folks trade off market would be like staking out the sheep for the wolves.

I would have to disagree with you on this. Like I have said, if you do it right, then I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. If you do it wrong, then you have only yourself to blame if it fails.

I believe that matured people should know what are the available options and be able to make informed decisions on their own. Of course there would be some players who don’t know any better, but I don’t believe in limiting everyone just for these minority.

Now for my opinion on how to deal with gold sellers: the best way to deal with them is to make it hard for them to be profitable. If the economy is in a state such that it is highly profitable to sell gold, then guess what? Gold sellers would swarm as expected.

Similarly, the TP fees are currently designed without a upper limit. This makes it desirable for people to think about skipping the TP fees when trading high value items. If the TP fees are capped, then the motivation for skipping them when trading high value items, would be gone or greatly reduced.

John Smith.4610:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Plenty of folks have been wildly successful with ideas many told them wouldn’t work. Plenty have gotten a big bite of “I told you so” too. It’s hard to predict with certainty how things will turn out when you’ve got a strong opinion about it. What’s the harm in trying?

Plus the important fact that since I have successfully brokered before, it reinforced this notion in my mind that it can work. I am not being stubborn for no reason. People who have done it successfully before, would naturally be more optimistic that it can work than the people who have not done it before.

If you can find a trustworthy broker who is trusted by both the seller and buyer, most of that work is already done.

Grey markets are not created in vacuum. Even if you, yourself become a trusted broker, creating that market creates opportunities for players to take advantage of each other. We know that goldsellers will lie, cheat and steal to get money, this market will be no different.

All I can say is, I am certainly not a gold seller.

I have never ever cheated anyone in an online game and I am not saying this because I am soliciting for business to broker trades. I would continue to caution everyone to not trust any random stranger. Using the TP is the still the safest route.

Having said this, if you have a real trusted friend and he is willing to broker for you, and the other party agrees, it can work but do that at your own risk.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Plenty of folks have been wildly successful with ideas many told them wouldn’t work. Plenty have gotten a big bite of “I told you so” too. It’s hard to predict with certainty how things will turn out when you’ve got a strong opinion about it. What’s the harm in trying?

Plus the important fact that since I have successfully brokered before, it reinforced this notion in my mind that it can work. I am not being stubborn for no reason. People who have done it successfully before, would naturally be more optimistic that it can work than the people who have not done it before.

If you can find a trustworthy broker who is trusted by both the seller and buyer, most of that work is already done.

nastyjman.8207:

DarkSpirit.7046:

nastyjman.8207:

High priced items never crossed my mind because it would be really foolish to circumvent the TP. If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

I don’t see how a net saving of 150g, over a 1000g trade is foolish. But like I have said, if you personally can’t tolerate the risk, that doesn’t imply that it would never work for anyone.

I think we are going around in circles at this point. Some say it is not worth the risk, but having successfully broker before, I say it is. There is no point going back and forth on this.

It was interesting when the issue of a big ticket item was mentioned. Although it was my fault since I did not explicitly say that bulk transactions is the viable trade for the broker system. Having big ticket items added in the broker system comes with a higher risk. The foolishness comes in part of the buyer and the seller.

But if there’s already a network that you have and maintain, then I applaud you. This was a concept that I bought up, but I didn’t know that a broker system is already in use. Not sure how many active brokers there are since I don’t see any brokers advertising their service in map chat.

Yes others have already thought about bypassing the TP fees using the in-game mail. But if your trade is low value, then you should either consult your trusted broker if he/she is willing to spend time and effort on it, or just use the TP. The TP is probably the best option for most trades.

It is certainly not impossible to bypass the TP fees, if it is done right. If it is impossible for this to work, then how did I manage to broker in the past? That is all I am saying.

nastyjman.8207:

High priced items never crossed my mind because it would be really foolish to circumvent the TP. If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

I don’t see how a net saving of 150g, over a 1000g trade is foolish. But like I have said, if you personally can’t tolerate the risk, that doesn’t imply that it would never work for anyone.

I think we are going around in circles at this point. Some say it is not worth the risk, but having successfully broker before, I say it is worth it, provided that it is done right. There is no point going back and forth on this.

I am certainly in no position to vouch for any random stranger who volunteers to broker for trades and I have always said that it is a bigger risk. I have also said that, I never expected ArenaNet to help out if you lose your items this way.

On the other hand, I don’t think that every single person cannot be trusted with a legendary either. I have hope for humanity and that some people can prove themselves to be honest and reliable. Besides, there are probably more successes, if you go through a trusted 3rd party, than failures. People don’t announce successful trades on the forums. But people who do it wrongly and got scammed, tend to announce it to the forums. So the perception of the general forum reader tend to be skewed from actual reality.

Geotherma.2395:

Zumy.6318:

In my eyes 200 samples is jut not enough.
I have a way bigger difference between the two kits.

200 is the most I could do, but with the Wiki facts that support my evidence, the devs input on those threads, and my own experience I can say with very little doubt that what is on the wiki is very accurate.

But if anyone has video + written evidence to the contrary
I see no problem in posting that info here.

The general consensus from players is that BL works better for rarer mats and ectos, but is supported by the wiki/devs like I said and now this small sample test. I welcome any supporting info that devs would like to provide as well.

Sorry but 200 salvages is not enough to prove that BLSK produces more ectos than Master. It is just luck.

Yes, accept the risks that you take.

When people do it wrong trading through the in-game mail system, without using a 3rd party, they tend to come to the forums to cry about it. But there were also successful mail trades that were done right, through a 3rd party, but the people involved usually don’t come to the forum to announce them. So, we hear more bad cases than good cases, which is natural, but we may have formed a skewed perception of the truth.

I am still optimistic about this and such brokerage system would be more popular if it gets organized.

Feature suggestion: Add the search filters that have not been implemented by their web page yet.

See: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Black-lion-trade-filter/first#post1605941

I tried different types and subtypes and found some interesting filters that have not been implemented in the page.

To view all back items: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=1&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view consumables: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=3&subtype=3&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view tonics: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=3&subtype=4&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view skins: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=3&subtype=7&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view dyes: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=3&subtype=8&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view utility nourishments: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=3&subtype=9&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view Gem Stones: https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=17&subtype=1&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

To view Sigils (as mentioned in my post above): https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=17&subtype=3&levelmin=0&levelmax=80

Again, login first (see my post above) and copy and paste the URL if it doesn’t work for you.

That is your preference and it is perfectly fine. However, it is also a well known fact that with bigger risks come bigger profits, so it is a matter of your personal degree of risk tolerance.

In real life, there are the blue chip traders and there are those who trade penny stocks and options. It is not a matter of one being right and the other being wrong, they both can co-exist.