Guild Wars 2

cranked.3812:

If anything account bound TP purchases are better for all the folks who actually want to use the dyes rather than make money on them. To me, this is the perfect example of why the TP purchases should be changed to account bound.

Not really. I will quit the game if that communistic dictatorship of the TP ever happens.

Isn’t luck everything in this game? Which ever time they choose there would always be some people somewhere in the world that couldn’t login then. There is just no way to please everybody.

Schizo.1375:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Schizo.1375:

People are scared right now by the idea of unid. dyes no longer dropping and only available from the MF or crafting. This will lower the supply to match the lower demand but some people think that unid. dyes will almost disappear all together and people are trying to make a mad grab for them now either to unlock as many colors as they can or to invest in dyes as they think prices will rise higher than they are now after the patch.

This. Unid dyes would be rarer after the patch and after initial stabilizing.

Right they will be rarer but who knows if they will actually be worth a lot more than they are now since

1) Dyes will be account bound greatly lowering the demand
2) There are other avenues for getting dyes

I myself am still unsure of the future and am just watching for now to see where things stand by the end of the day and into tomorrow.

Unless they introduced new avenues for getting unid dyes, the old avenues are not that great plus they don’t drop from loot anymore. Yes the demand would drop since it is account bound but so will the supply.

Also if skins are unlocked account-wide, wouldn’t those assault knight power core drop in value? Since you only need it on one character. All skins should be dropping in value.

Schizo.1375:

People are scared right now by the idea of unid. dyes no longer dropping and only available from the MF or crafting. This will lower the supply to match the lower demand but some people think that unid. dyes will almost disappear all together and people are trying to make a mad grab for them now either to unlock as many colors as they can or to invest in dyes as they think prices will rise higher than they are now after the patch.

This. Unid dyes would be rarer after the patch and after initial stabilizing.

Zaxares.5419:

I got the Collection Expanders primarily as a way to help stockpile Ingots/Planks etc. for future Ascended Crafting use. Plus, I’m a hoarder. I like seeing big numbers in my bank.

Since I have 250 free slots from my guild stash, any excess high tier materials are stored there or sold when their price is right. You can always buy them back at a lower price when you need them or place a low buy order at the meantime and you may even make a profit.

Furthermore, the concept of a collection expander is not as worth it if you have already 400-500 crafting levels with maxed level 80 characters. What are you going to do with your lower tier crafting materials, since not all of them can be used for ascended crafting? I would just promote them through the mystic forge or sell them, rather than hoard them above 250.

Oh, I agree that the current system works very well, but I don’t think the economy would be harmed that much if players couldn’t convert gold to gems. John Smith has never provided us with figures, but I suspect the taxes collected from gem conversion transactions is a drop in the ocean compared with the taxes collected from standard BLTC transactions; there’s simply WAY more of the latter.

But without numbers to backup your claim, it is still pure guesswork on your part. Furthermore, the way gem-gold conversions is currently designed, it is like a see-saw balancing out each other. If you remove the conversion from gold to gem, so the rate stays the same, then there is nothing else deterring the conversion from gem to gold which opens up the possibly of some rich players causing uncontrolled inflation to the economy.

(I suspect that the vast majority of gems bought with cash are simply spent immediately on the gem store and not converted to gold.) ANet could simply compensate by tacking on an additional 10 – 15% tax paid by the buyer when purchasing items

Then I must belong to the minority if you are right. Since I have said that there is nothing worth buying in the gem store, guess what I usually do with my gems? That’s right, converting them into gold most of the time.

The last point, however, I’ll grant in your favour. I’ve always resisted game mechanics which divide players into different classes. I do not really want to see a game where players with cash have access to things that players without cash simply cannot obtain. That’s actually exactly why I do not support power creep in tools or other gem store purchases; it would end up creating different “classes” of players, those who can afford the good stuff, and those that can’t.

The way to ensure that the game is not P2W is not by making the gem store items as sucky as always. It is by controlling the game mechanics as ArenaNet has done.

The most powerful items in the game, exceptions being the legendaries which are still very expensive and do not yet include armor and trinkets, can’t be bought no matter how much gold you have. Why do you think they designed it this way?

Making the gem store items sucky would just hurt ArenaNet’s bottom line and in turn, the quality of the game. Gold, in GW2, is way overrated because you can never ever buy all the most powerful items in the game no matter how much gold you have. You can’t even craft them with all the gold alone because you still need vision crystals, so you still have to play enough of the game to get them.

Zaxares.5419:

Everybody has different ideas on what constitutes a “good purchase” from the gem store. For me, the unlimited tools were well-worth their price, for the time savings I mentioned above. I also fully kitted out all my characters with bag slots, bank slots, and 5 Collection Expanders. I find minipets and town clothes to be utterly useless, yet to some people they are cherished purchases that they value highly. I also see no need to pay exorbitant prices for the limited edition dyes when you’re barely able to tell the difference between them and a cheaper dye unless you look closely. (Doubly so for other players, if they even bother paying attention to you at all.) The “value” of an item is really divorced from what the price is in gems/gold since it’s so subjective to an individual player.

Bag slots are not worth it as they only help 1 character. Bank slots perhaps, but if you use your bank slots sparingly you can probably wait for the next sales. Furthermore, I use my personal guild deep cave for non-account bound stuff, saving me gold. Collection Expander? If you need them, it is probably long overdue for you to upgrade your collection items to the next tier in the mystic forge.

Agree that mini-pets and town clothes are utterly useless. They made more sense in GW1 than in GW2 anyway.

We also have to keep in mind that the ability for players to convert gold to gems is purely a “nice gesture” on ANet’s part. No doubt they’d make a lot more money if no conversion existed and all gems had to be purchased with cash. I’d go as far to say that they value the players who spent real money on gems a LOT more than those who don’t, since at the end of the day, they’re the ones paying the bills. The value of gem store items should always be looked at from a real cash value rather than the gold value, and with a couple of exceptions (such as the individual armor pieces), the price has not shifted since release.

The ability to convert gold to gems is not simply a “nice gesture” on ANet’s part. It is part of an auto inflation control system to get rid of excess gold from the economy and because of that the players who buy gems with gold are also important to ANet because these are the players that provide the reason for others to convert real money into gems then gold. Without these players who convert gold to gems, the value of gems would drop and there would be less incentive for others to buy gems with real money so as to convert them to gold.

Furthermore, allowing players to convert their gold to gems allow people who are more cash-strapped in real life to also buy gem store items, raising the gem-gold exchange rate in favor of gems. Which in turn, fuel the incentive for cash-rich players to convert real money to gems then gold when the exchange rate goes up in favor of gems. So as you can see, players who buy gems with gold do play an important part in this equation.

In summary, people who buy gems with gold are important to maintaining the economy because:

1. Inflation control – They balance out the inflationary effect of cash-rich players who bought gems with real money for the purpose of exchanging them for gold.

2. Increases demand for gems to cash-rich players who buy gems with real money – They do this by increasing the exchange rate of gems to gold in favor of gems.

3. Allow cash-poor players to also participate in the gem store which is good for the game.

Razor.9872:

Anyone know when the vender is supposed to show up? April 1st? 14th?

Yes, when is the vendor, who collects blade shards, showing up? And what is he/she offering?

Zaxares.5419:

Again, I’m not arguing that paying for convenience is P2W. I’m saying that the Watchwork Pick was a possible move TOWARDS P2W. If the majority of the playerbase were OK with slow power creep of gem store items, then we could have expected future tools, and possibly other items, to also come with their own unique benefits, and who knows where that might lead. Unlimited tools that have an increased chance to give double ore from strikes? A Frequent Gater Discount on waypoints? The ability to teleport instantly to a friend’s location, as we saw from the Kongzhong version of GW2?

Why not? There are just no good items in their gem store. Every day I have to go through their list of items multiple times, wanting to buy something, but ended up finding nothing worth buying. And when I say worth, I really try to find out if an item is worth buying by calculating its value. So far, I have not found a single item that is worth buying in the gem store and the gem store is getting more and more expensive as the gold/gem ratio keeps going up in favor of gems.

If people have to pay more gold for the same gem store item, why not add extra functionalitiies to make them more worthwhile?

Zaxares.5419:

The infinite tools were designed to offer convenience for a price (use 1 pick for everything, never bother with replacing said pick again). Of course anybody with a decent grasp of mathematics knows that buying picks to “win economically” is silly, for the reasons you mentioned.

The Watchwork Pick only raised concerns because it was the very first infinite tool to offer something ABOVE convenience, and it could have marked the beginning of a dangerous trend of gem store power creep that COULD lead to P2W (if players were OK with gradually increasing power levels of gem store items, eventually the items would just keep getting better and better until we would be in a situation where GW2 was P2W for all effective purposes).

So overpaying for small conveniences equals to P2W now? That is just not logical. You pay 90g for the ability to skip 1 loading screen, therefore you are winning? Right…

Sprockets may have gone up a little but at the upfront cost of 90g (equivalent to about 5800+ sprockets at today’s prices) just to get some amount of sprockets when you mine, over many years, sounds more like P2L to me because you are obviously making a bad investment in terms of gold. At 20% chance, you need to make about 29,300+ swings just to break even. How many years of consistent mining do you need to get that, considering vacation time, sick time, and RL interruptions? I am not even going to talk about gathering tools that you can buy with karma and buying lower cost gathering tools for lower tier nodes or even lower cost tools you get for free from loot.

If you say, oh it is for my convenience, then each person would value his or her own convenience differently. But at 90g, you do pay a lot upfront for your convenience IMO. Furthermore, how is this P2W at such a steep upfront cost? Where is the “win” portion of this argument? How is this considered winning over those who have not bought any of the infinite tools? Or are you saying that gaining that small convenience, for a huge upfront cost, is equivalent to P2W?

Malediktus.9250:

Guess what you get these sprockets in addition to the older permanent pickaxes, which also costed 1k gems. Your argument is worthless.

And how are they even P2W? Why don’t you calculate how much ore you are willing to mine on an average day and see when you would ever break even?

@kurljah: You forgot to take into account that

1. You are not going to mine consistently to the max every single day for the next 5 years or so. There would be time when you are on vacation, time when you are too sick to play, too busy with RL stuff, etc.
2. You did not take into account whether you would even be playing this game by then.
3. You did not take into account karma tools and cheaper tools to mine lower tier ores
4. You did not take into account WvW merchants that also sell gathering tools and you can enter WvW from anywhere else in the map. This means that you are silly enough to overpay for that convenience because you may as well pay back by inconveniencing yourself in return by farming for more gold as a result of overpaying for that small convenience.
5. By putting 1000 gems into investing in such a pick, you miss out on the amount of real investment opportunities to grow your wealth between now and 5 years later.
6. By calling the watchwork mining pick P2W (I am referring to the people who call it P2W), you show that you can’t calculate the amount of gold/gems needed to buy it in the first place which shows that it is more P2L than P2W.

One of the biggest problems with the gem store is that you can no longer buy the old items again.

Where is the watchwork pick, Rox’s quiver, copper-fed salvage, etc. I know that by placing them as limited time items you try to spur demand but over time you are just going to incur the opportunity cost from people who may want to buy them now but they cant.

Therefore, limited time SALES yes, but limited time availability is a very bad approach. When I want to get the items they are just not there, but when they are there for the limited time, I didn’t know about it. So I couldn’t buy them even if I want to.

dAcIaW.5107:

DarkSpirit.7046:

dAcIaW.5107:

lol refund? Na just remove them. (Ya i know they would for this because people spent real money on them but they never compensated people for removing their fractal levels or when removing glory converting the glory boosters into something of worth (after all they were obtained from achievement chests n stuff so way to give us a worthless reward))

I am not going to support any suggestion to break the law by proposing that ANet tries to screw their players by not giving them the goods they paid for after taking their money.

They did give you the item that you paid for, and now it is time for them to take it away, which I am pretty sure they can do legally because everything in the game is still their property and they can do with it as they want (pretty sure it says something along those lines in the ToS)

So after paying full price for your car, they take it back after you have driven it for a day is legal? That is ridiculous! Just because you overpaid for your convenience doesn’t mean everyone now has to be screwed because you are angry and jealous.

As for the old picks, you paid for it as they were. They didn’t gain or lose any functions so those transactions were legal. There is nothing that says ArenaNet cannot sell them for a cheaper price or even improve on their functions at the same price later to benefit everyone else.

Malediktus.9250:

Obtena.7952:

dAcIaW.5107:

still waiting i guess

Me too. At 50c, P2win with sprockets is going to take a long time.

Guess what, they are 1s 30c already

Guess what, at the cost 1000 gems, I can already afford to buy 5000+ sprockets instead of buying the pick. How many years do you think it would take for you to mine 5000+ sprockets with the pick to break even? You failed elementary school math when what you call as P2W is actually P2L.

@Gene: What Arenanet did is legal and it is good for the gaming community to get better items from their gem store at the same price. Trying to restrict that is to force them to sell old crappy stuff in their gem store so that you can maintain some perceived advantage for yourself. It has a selfish purpose and it is bad for everyone else so why should we support that?

dAcIaW.5107:

lol refund? Na just remove them. (Ya i know they would for this because people spent real money on them but they never compensated people for removing their fractal levels or when removing glory converting the glory boosters into something of worth (after all they were obtained from achievement chests n stuff so way to give us a worthless reward))

I am not going to support any suggestion to break the law by proposing that ANet tries to screw their players by not giving them the goods they paid for after taking their money.

Gene Archer.8560:

>Implying you successfully did anything or were the reason for anything at all. When our posts are an hour apart at most. And it was already 10 PM on the West Coast, and Midnight on the East Coast.

And this just proves that you really don’t have reading comprehension. Because how can I be defending P2W when what my post said was that one of the biggest problems was that people like yourself were continuing to latch onto the P2W arguments which weren’t at all important.

Thus the quip about mtpellion doing unlike yourself, and actually having the decency to acknowledge that there were arguments aside from P2W. Which he did. Not in a fashion I would have liked. But by god, he/she is at least a decent enough person to understand those other arguments even exist and are a thing.

Then why didn’t you stop them then? It is always convenient and hypocritical to say this after I have done all the work.

That analogy doesn’t fit at all because it ignores the part where the unlimited tools involve money. Also that part where ANet reintroduced the regular unlimited tools and then a week later brought out one that is better than them.

And the real world doesn’t involve money? ArenaNet is free to reintroduce the regular unlimited tool as they have different animation. Perhaps some users would still prefer the animations of the older tools.

It also ignores the part where they would have wound up with less sales, because people would just continually sit, waiting for the next best tool. Why get the one that drops sprockets when you can get one that’s even better than that? One that drops sprockets AND cake (or whatever item you wish, the items being dropped are frankly, unimportant to the argument)

You don’t know that for sure. Besides if they do have less sales then that is their problem, not yours. If you prefer the watchwork pick then go buy it instead. There is nothing in any contract that says ArenaNet can’t experiment with their own market.

It was a form of cash shop vertical progression, among other things. It wasn’t cool, and the game is better for it not happening again with the thresher.

If your big complaint is that cashshop items in this game aren’t worth the money, there’s a very simple solution: Petition to have ANet lower the gem prices for items.

I disagree. Anything that creates more variety in their cash shop and giving players more option would be cool.

It sounds like you are just jealous that ArenaNet introduced what you perceived to be a better pick than the one you bought from them earlier. Having a better offering is better for the player base as a whole. Too bad you are too self-centered to realize that.

Gene Archer.8560:

The only one late to the kittening party is yourself. By two weeks. And yet you felt the need to post here despite thinking that the thread was unnecessary.

And by responding just at the time when I have shut all the P2W complainers up, just sounded hypocritical to me, especially if you claim to not be supporting their P2W argument.

I have stated time and again, now, and back then, that it was never about sprockets. That it was never about P2W. I have stated multiple times that it was about things like precedent, making the older picks obsolete, all that other stuff that was brought up.

The only ones ignoring those arguments are yourself and the people like you who see someone else say P2W and then you latch on to it and steer everything toward that, refusing to let go and ignore those arguments and instead engage arguments that aren’t about P2W.

It’s not my fault that you’re literally fixated on P2W and P2W alone.

Honestly I also don’t agree with the original argument. The gem store items are as pathetic as they have always been and ArenaNet does have the right to improve on their offerings.

It is like saying, I farmed hard for champion bags for the past 2 months and I would be against them adding better items into the bags right now. That kind of argument just sounds very selfish and not good for the gaming population as a whole.

The P2W arguments were so obviously flawed that it was my pleasure to take them apart since nobody else did. The original argument also doesn’t make much sense as there are many cases of improved offerings in the real world. Furthermore, if you don’t want ArenaNet to give a better deal later to someone else, then in the real world, you would ask them to sign a contract with you. But that would cost you much more than 1000 gems, I am sure.

If you think that those who accused ArenaNet of being P2W were wrong then why didn’t you respond until now? Unless you, who are against the pick in the first place, wanted to create more trouble for ArenaNet in order to pressure them to remove the pick from the game.

So I don’t think you are any better than those who claimed ArenaNet to be P2W since you have allowed the discussion to degenerate into such wrongful accusations in the first place as it suited your needs.

Gene Archer.8560:

Christ, at least mtpellion had the decency to actually acknowledge that only a subset of people within the thread were actually saying anything about P2W. Then again, he, unlike yourself, actually has elementary reading comprehension.

Maybe you should consider some classes next door to the elementary math students.

Are you saying that watchwork pick is such a big problem in the game right now that this old thread has to stick around forever?

What a laugh! People are endlessly complaining about something that is not even buy-able right now. Worse than that, it is not even worth buying at its price when it was buy-able!

People just ran out things to complain so they decided to complain about the item being P2W when it was too expensive to be worth it then and not even buy-able now!

People who complained against the watchwork pick are just too stupid to perform elementary school math. Worse than that, they have driven the discussion into wrongful accusations against Arenanet being P2W.

Kruhljak.2705:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Or better yet, actually introduce something in their gem store that is mathematically proven to be worth buying FOR ONCE!

Hehe, but all infinite gathering tools are mathematically proven to be worth buying. It’s just a question of whether you believe you’ll be playing (and gathering) long enough for it to pay off.

That is total BS. None of the infinite gathering tools are mathematically proven to be worth buying, quite the opposite. These people simply failed their elementary school math. They will take so many years to break even that most of them probably wouldn’t even be playing this game by then, much less mining consistently every day between then and now to break even. I am not even going to mention karma and the option to buy cheaper picks for mining the lesser ores.

Kruhljak.2705:

Having said that, gem store items need to stay very close to purely cosmetic to avoid long term, potentially undesirable, ripples in the game economy. I’d wager most of the people that have bought infinite gathering items will never see any major payoff in terms of in-game profits. Instead, they’ll just get major payoffs in terms of convenience, which is the point. In which case, these items are working as intended.

Then they are paying too much for too little convenience as most of them do not even realize that WvW merchants also sell gathering tools and you can enter WvW where ever you are.

Besides, this thread is all about claiming that the watchwork pick is P2W because it returns more gold, in the form of sprockets, than you put into buying the pick itself. This is totally BS.

How can it be considered P2W if you lose more gold buying it, than not buying it? Overpaying for small convenience is one thing, calling something that is so expensive that it causes you to lose more gold to buy and use it, a P2W item is another. That is just being stupid.

dAcIaW.5107:

I think Anet should just delete all the sprocket picks from the game and call it good, it would be in line with what they like to do. For example remove people’s fractal achievements moving them down from 80 to 30, or making glory boosters totally pointless but not providing any sort of compensation of any sort.

Don’t forget to refund the price if they deleted items that people have actually paid for. They would be able to buy more sprockets with their refund than with the pick itself.

Or better yet, actually introduce something in their gem store that is mathematically proven to be worth buying FOR ONCE!

Hopefully, I know this would never happen, people here would learn how to perform elementary school math on item pricing before they claim something to be P2W when they are really P2L.

tkarr.9152:

Kanebrake.6192:

Nike.2631:

The real fun will be to see if they EVER try to sell the molten or bone picks ever again…

I’m sure they’ll sell them again. Or at least ones that mirror the same functionality. They’re selling a threshing tool that to my knowledge doesn’t have any added bonuses or features.

The most fun of all is to see if ANYONE from ANET even cares enough to look at posts that concern players……If you look at the number of responses it’s 6 TOTAL thread responses in the first 2 pages (2 of them were to close the threads ) now that is interest and involvement!!

As it is right now, there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, worth buying in the gem store as the gem/gold conversion keeps going up in favor of gems, making their already-expensive cosmetic-only items even more expensive. They are so afraid of being called P2W that the only thing gems are good for is to convert them to gold.

Unless anyone here failed his elementary school math, even if the pick comes back, with the price of 1000 gems, with 1000 gems converted to gold today, you can buy thousands of sprockets. That is so much more than the pick can ever mine for you in many years to come. So is the pick really P2W? I don’t think so, if the price is so high that you can already win more sprockets without buying it than to buy it. Sounds more like P2L to me.

khani.4786:

Charismatic Harm.9683:

khani.4786:

DarkSpirit.7046:

hobbes.6178:

“How do I search for a backpiece?”
“Oh just type Spineguard”
“…how was I supposed to know that?”
“I….I don’t know…you weren’t I guess…?”

It has been long enough.

https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=1

Can’t buy them directly from your browser but at least you can search for them and buy them in the game.

Yep…works great..

“ERROR: Invalid authorization”

Go to…..
https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/authenticate
…..first.

Then go to the link in the above post.

Edit: That link will take you to an account login page where you have to put in your e-mail address and password to authenticate your connection to the Trading Post. Enter that information, then you can basically look at items on the Trading Post from a web browser outside of the game….just as you can from within it.

Still doesn’t work. The page comes up but it doesn’t work.

I’d much rather they fix the trading post in-game anyways. :p

You need to login first. Try this:

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

after that, then use this URL on the SAME browser instance:

https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=1

Healix.5819:

DarkSpirit.7046:

https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=1

Wouldn’t it be easier if…

Yes it would be, but the filter bugs have been around since release, so I don’t expect them to be fixed anytime soon.

On the other hand, it is an open opportunity to build an app with a better filter for TP searching/buying/etc. Add an armor weight class filter even, if you want to. Their TP interface has much room for improvement.

Although it is possible to redirect their awesomenium brower to another web page, I have always felt that they should have documented and made such a process public, as a form of client customization so that people can make their own TP interface for use in the game.

hobbes.6178:

“How do I search for a backpiece?”
“Oh just type Spineguard”
“…how was I supposed to know that?”
“I….I don’t know…you weren’t I guess…?”

It has been long enough.

https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/search?text=&type=1

Can’t buy them directly from your browser but at least you can search for them and buy them in the game.

Cassocaster.4576:

As far as your gold comment, 1000 gems is a very small amount of gold in the big picture and cost about $12US. People probably spend more on coffee in a couple days….

That’s right, which shows just how ridiculous this thread is. People keep complaining about a pick that would probably give you much < 6300 sprockets over a period of years, which translates to only $12US.

So we are spending all that time complaining about an advantage that is worth much less than a cup of coffee.

The pick itself is irrelevant when you consider that the people who can afford to buy one, can already afford to buy 6300 sprockets with their gems.

Cassocaster.4576:

Getting mad because “it’s not fair” is ridiculous, failure to see the potential in this pick was a very common mistake

So how is that different from straight-out converting that 1000 gems into gold instead of buying the pick. How many watchwork sprockets would that 1000 gems (converted to gold) get you compared to buying the pick?

Of course people who have 1000 gems can always convert that to a significant amount of gold, with or without the pick. But we already know that don’t we?

Pie Flavor.1647:

I’m afraid with the introduction of this tool there will be more and more gem shop items that are only exclusive to rich people and that give all kinds of advantages over others. Are my fears unfounded? that’s a matter of opinion.

Think, you are talking about a MMO that allows people to convert real cash into gold in the game. Rich people are already having an advantage in this game! Just that, surprisingly, some of you have not even realized this. Take a moment and let that sink in…

So you are afraid of something that has already happened on the very first day of release.

I don’t even see this in the gem store anymore, so does this thread even serve a purpose?

I guess when people run out of things to complain about, they would create threads to complain about phantom items.

On the other hand, if this watchwork mining pick ever do come on sale in the gem store again, I would definitely buy it now because of all the “advertisements” from this thread.

It can be daunting for the average user to profit from crafting. Think about it, the more items you craft, you more of the same ingredients you have to buy. The more of the same ingredients you buy, the more they rise in value as the cheaper ones got bought up.

So your crafting cost increases as you craft the same item over and over, which means your profit margin decreases. Gw2spidy crafting profitability is a guide but technically, it is a guide for only crafting ONE item not a whole slew of them for huge profits. For the latter, you need to write a more complex algorithm with possibly multiple minimum cost crafting trees.

KyreneZA.8617:

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is interesting to know. Time to buy cheap items to salvage for silk.

Good luck with that.

Yes there are not that many worth while items to salvage for silk now, compared to last week, since I expect others to be doing the same. But I wrote a small search salvage program to search the TP for me using the api and there are still some items that are worth while to salvage for silk.

Sinaya.4201:

Vol.7601:

What is there to compete for? Sure if your end game goal is to be the richest person in game, then you have already lost.

Or if your goal is to have all legendaries for your class, sure.

I suppose competition wasn’t the proper word. What’s frustrating is that folks who use things like multi-client programs, macros, farm bots, speed hacks and other game-altering programs ultimately ruin the experience for the rest of us.

It’s not simply that they have more gold, but it’s the impact it has on the rest of the community. A small number of people (who utilize third-party programs to get an edge) can and do manipulate our markets, causing inflation. People call it supply and demand, but it’s really more like cheating and greed.

It’s one thing to put in the effort to collect items, do the research to figure out what’s profitable, and then sell to get in-game currency. It’s another to download cheating programs to do all of the work for you.

I don’t think that you need to pay money for those programs. The only thing that you need to pay are the extra GW2 accounts if you want to earn as fast as he does., but that goes to ArenaNet. Otherwise you don’t even need the program or the extra accounts. If you don’t need to pay for the program then what is preventing others from using the same program? Seems to me that they are on level footing then.

It is like complaining why people who know about gw2spidy or wiki having an informational advantage over those who don’t.

He still earn gold without the program, with just one account. It is just slower that’s all. Furthermore, people usually have multiple PCs at home so they can still use this even without the program, just not as convenient. And ArenaNet can’t prevent people from buying more than one account, siblings, parent/children, husbands/wives, need to be able to play together.

The only way to prevent this is to make crafting sucks, totally destroy it so that it is always not profitable to craft. But I don’t think that would be good for the game.

This is similar to my own technique. Instead of just crafting rare greatswords, I search for the most profitable items to craft at any one time based on their offer price so I can sell them for a profit instantly without being undercut. When I posted here that crafting can be profitable, people just didn’t believe me:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Is-crafting-worth-it-2/first#post3709909

People are just too lazy to do all that work. Laziness is the biggest obstacle for people to profit from crafting.

Zaoda.1653:

Wanze.8410:

Silk got too expensive.

This.

I gave up crafting damask a long time ago. Not worth my time.

Perhaps, but it has been a great help for people from 460 to get to 470 crafting level of leatherworker and tailor cheaply. They level up their crafting and yet earn a profit. I am just glad I already went through that when bolt of damask was worth crafting.

That is interesting to know. Time to buy cheap items to salvage for silk.

What happened? Spidy now shows a -1.5g profit to craft and sell bolt of damask.

Should I destroy them?

Toxic Code Fragments
Molten Code Fragments
Aetherblade Code Fragments
Watchwork Code Fragments
Scarlet’s Lockbox Code Fragments
Scarlet’s spare keys
Power Core Components

Mystical Cogs
Toy Golem Frame
Ventari Frame
Twisted Watchwork Shoulder Scrap

Continue coins
Baubles
Fortune Scraps

Alpha Golem Siege Blueprints (account-bound)

Should I destroy them?

Aberrant.6749:

This is what I’ve been doing… go into your own boarderland’s WvW. You;ll have crafting stations + npcs + possibly a waypointed forge in your own gari. Log out/back in and it’ll put you back where you were before you went into WvW.

I’ve been doing this sort of thing for ages to get a mining pick, need to NPC loot, or whatever if I happen to run out.

I have been doing that too but that doesn’t work if your server’s WvW is full and you have to be in the queue. Besides, if too many people do that, that would impact your server’s WvW queue and people who want to do WvW would not be able to do so.

Vol.7601:

It will be a lot more efficient converting those gems to gold and buying 20 slots, I think.

And that is my pet peeve on the gem store. I really don’t know what is worth buying in there besides converting the gems to gold, which is not really buying anything in the gem store.

Occasionally, I do buy Black Lion salvage kit because I can still earn gold from salvaging cheap exotics using them. But that is about it.

Morhyn.8032:

~shrug~

When I do a search for OData, which I had never heard of before reading this thread, almost all of the top results are from Microsoft oriented sites/projects — https://duckduckgo.com/?q=odata

The first interesting result that pertains to this conversation is a StackOverflow question — http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2458407/difference-between-odata-and-rest-web-services . The accepted answer should tell you why no one here is excited by your suggestion:

As Franci said, OData is based on Atom Pub. However, they have layered some functionality on top and unfortunately have ignored some of the REST constraints in the process.

The querying capability of an OData service requires you to construct URIs based on information that is not available, or linked to in the response. It is what REST people call out-of-band information and introduces hidden coupling between the client and server.

Do you not realize that the drawbacks mentioned in that link also exists in ArenaNet’s current implementation of their API? The link addresses issues from some developer on how OData can be improved upon for generic purposes. Do we need to “create media types to describe these key pieces of data” as mentioned in the link for ArenaNet’s API? Not really. Do we currently “construct URIs based on information that is not available or linked to in the response” for the current ArenaNet’s API? Of course we do.

Therefore, if supporting “these features” are really that important to you, rather than going ahead with the current implementation, which is also lacking, you should be proposing another open REST protocol standard that support “these features”, if you can.

OData is brining nothing useful to the table.

Since I hate repeating myself: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/OData/first#post3704642

I haven’t addressed your insistence on “it also supports JSON” because there really isn’t any point. Why would it supporting JSON immediately make it a worthwhile change? JSON as an output format doesn’t make the added complexity of being able to get the output worth it.

That is to address your complaints against XML being “overly verbose”.

I’m not “biased against technologies from Microsoft simply because [I] hate Microsoft.” But I’m certainly no fan of their style and won’t just accept using their solution when a simpler, more open one, is possible.

Again that sounds like more brand name prejudice than anything else. What is “their style”? Their style of supporting XML? Many companies use XML too. Their style of ever proposing WSDL in their ancient history? WSDL is a supported standard of W3C.

If I take a section of code written by Microsoft and a section of code written by Google are you able to tell the difference, other than the copyright statement on top? I ask because I have worked in the Software industry for 20+ years and personally know friends, whom I have worked with, from either companies. Please filter your personal prejudices against certain companies for whatever personal encounters you had with them or who you work for. We are only interested to evaluate this based on sound scientific and engineering principles, we are not interested in your personal prejudices.

To be honest, I really don’t know what to buy in the gem store. The only things I buy are:

1. BL salvage kits
2. Convert gems to gold.

The rest of the stuff are way too expensive. The permanent node harvesting tools are nice but they are priced so expensive that I calculated that it take me years to earn back the initial cost investment. But I suppose many players did buy them out of convenience but I just can’t justify making such a bad investment for myself.

What I would spend my money on are:

1. Things that help me in the game (e.g. mercenaries)
2. Things that would earn me more in-game currencies than simply converting the gem to gold, after logical calculations

Morhyn.8032:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Morhyn.8032:

I’d like more standardized responses from the API, for sure. But I don’t need some overly verbose Microsoft garbage as the resolution to that problem. Might as well opine that it should support WSDL while you’re at it (ugh).

Define what “overly verbose Microsoft garbage” is?

Like I have said, you don’t need to use XML. You can request for JSON responses as a client.

Besides WSDL is a W3C standard, not a Microsoft standard. At least the latest version of it is.

You can go with supporting an open standard like OData or you can go with a proprietary web service API like what we have now. I would vote to support open standards myself.

XML => overly verbose
ODATA => Created by Microsoft

Thus, “overly verbose Microsoft garbage.”

Also, I did not claim WSDL is a Microsoft standard. I said “since you’re asking for a format that cumbersome for anyone not using a Microsoft IDE, or one that follows their lead, you might as well go ahead and ask for an equally painful standard (WSDL).”

Seriously, there are only two things that need to be addressed in the next version of the API to make the current API better as-is (i.e. not including new features):

1. A standard response format. None of this objects keyed with the name of the endpoint in one method and not keyed that way in another (my preference).

2. Documentation that clearly outlines the responses you should expect from the endpoints with zero ambiguity (I’m looking at you item_details.json).

It looks like you are biased against technologies from Microsoft simply because you hate Microsoft instead of being able to evaluate them based on their own merits. So there is no point for me to hold any technical discussion with you any further since you are judging based solely on original brands. Besides, if you keep complaining about XML being too verbose, then which part of the “it also supports JSON” mentioned here, here, or here do you not understand?

I am looking for comments from technical people, based on software engineering and computer science concepts on this thread not brand name-marketing rubbish.

smiley.1438:

DarkSpirit.7046:

a proprietary web service API like what we have now.

Where exactly is a simple JSON response “proprietary”?

JSON is an open data representation standard, you can use an open data representation standard like JSON and yet have a proprietary data access protocol to access your data.

OData, on the other hand, is an open data access protocol standard that supports BOTH JSON and XML data representation formats, it returns response data in JSON or XML depending on the choice made by the client’s HTTP “Accept” header.

Nimshae.2743:

However with a bit of research, the right crafts, and some common sense, it’s not a complete cop out.

That is true, but because it is something that takes effort most people would not recognize crafting as being profitable, no matter how much proof we can provide. People are inherently lazy and would only recognize lazy paths to riches which crafting isn’t one of them.

StevenL.3761:

In my humble opinion, OData support would be a huge improvement, but a lot of its potential would go to waste because the APIs are read-only.

Even if all the APIs are read-only, OData also contributes to a much richer set of query syntax compared to what we have now. If you can call what we have now, a query syntax. For example, you would be able to ask the server to only return a list of all the light armors in a single request, not just one item per request based on only the item id. You have support for $select, $filter, $orderby, $top, $skip, $count, $search, functionality and much more. How is that not an improvement over what we have now?

Besides, if they do want to provide support for a Trading Post API, then you can have full CRUD support, not just reads.

Morhyn.8032:

I’d like more standardized responses from the API, for sure. But I don’t need some overly verbose Microsoft garbage as the resolution to that problem. Might as well opine that it should support WSDL while you’re at it (ugh).

Define what “overly verbose Microsoft garbage” is?

Like I have said, you don’t need to use XML. You can request for JSON responses as a client.

Besides WSDL is a W3C standard, not a Microsoft standard. At least the latest version of it is.

You can go with supporting an open standard like OData or you can go with a proprietary web service API like what we have now. I would vote to support open standards myself.

Killer Rhino.6794:

Either way, I don’t want metadata or type information in my responses. JSON is simple and easy to use because it eschews this sort of verbosity.

As I have already said, it supports JSON as well. The client chooses the format that it wants to deal with.

You don’t need to query the metadata on every call. In fact, you don’t even need to query the metadata at all if you don’t want to, assuming that the service has not changed or has not changed in a way that may break legacy clients. But it is nice to have metadata for those who choose to build more adaptable clients or if your development platform supports intellisense from an OData Web service reference (e.g. Visual Studio).

Killer Rhino.6794:

I can’t say this enough: No XML!

OData supports JSON format as well:

http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-3-0/json-verbose-format/

As for the metadata, I agree that not being able to list them in JSON format is a slight drawback. However, you can get the service document in JSON, which is a subset of the metadata. It doesn’t have the type information but you can see the entity sets (i.e. the available entry points to the service).

http://odata.informea.org/services/odata.svc?$format=json

The main advantage of supporting an open standard is promoting code reuse in both the client and server.

Because then you can do queries, filters, etc. all through the URL.

http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-3-0/url-conventions/

It also have full CRUD support for maybe something like a new trading post api:

GET: Gets one or many entries.
POST: Create a new entry.
PUT: Update an existing entry
DELETE: Remove an entry.

You can also see the metadata describing the objects returned by the database instead of just relying on external API documentations in the wiki.

http://services.odata.org/V4/(S(gasi45ui0rqgrijmvv4kzw14))/OData/OData.svc/$metadata

It is an open standard that is supported by numerous clients, even in Android, IOS and Windows Phone. Even Netflix has moved to expose its data through OData.

The biggest con I see would be the development cost of moving to OData, even though it already has libraries for .NET, Java, and Javascript.

Personally I am working on an OData service provider at work and it seems this API could have used a more open standard like OData which can return XML or JSON depending on the client headers. And it has much better support for queries.

http://www.odata.org/

Opinions?

Windwalker.2047:

Saint Scarlet.2906:

Astralporing.1957:

laurel vendor is different. There are no dungeon vendors. There’s no Fractals entrance… need i go on?

Well if you go into the fractal entrance you’re leaving the area so has no relevance. As for dungeon vendors, do you really use them that often that you need them right beside everythng else because it’s so difficult to click a button.
You’re complaining just for the sake of complaining. Anet did what they said, they moved everything to the Vigil keep that was unique to LA. Is it their fault you’re too lazy to click a button to go somewhere to get something you need.
Why don’t you stop moaning and start being proactive. Now is your chance to decide where they move everything to, they are letting the players choose where the next hub will be so make a case for somewhere that has everything laid out better.

That’s all nice and fluffy but what is their reason for not doing something as simple as putting a couple of objects (crafting stations) and relevant npc’s in vigil keep, a task so basic even their interns could do it?

Isn’t that obvious? How else are they going to nudge you guys into buying the Captain’s pass? The more inconveniences they introduce in the game, the more powerful their “nudge” would be, for you to spend in their gem store.

Yes, it is rather under-handed and it makes them look desperate.