Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

The median and 50% of players rows are the same, so the same phrase applies. Thus, we can extrapolate to say that 500g is ‘your ticket into the top 99%.’ I think you were arguing as though it were the mean, so lets look at the average for 500-1000h.

You are actually looking at “account wealth,” while I was using the “liquid gold” value, since “account wealth” takes into account plenty of irrelevant data, like dyes, skins, and other things that a player might naturally accumulate over his play time, that have no value to him and he could never have the opportunity to sell.

Ahh, I missed that. Does liquid gold take into account various sellable mats in the person’s bank/material collection?

Ohoni.6057:

Anyway, I was talking about “those within the lower 50th percentile.” The mean is an averaging of what the highest has with the lowest, so all you’re doing is pointing out how the higher wealth players have a disproportionate amount of that wealth, which supports my position. If those at the top had a proportionate share of the available wealth, then the median would be roughly equal to the mean, rather than closer to 2/3 of the mean for account wealth, or 5/6 for liquid gold.

Well, you were looking at the 50th percentile, the exact middle. Not sure what this ‘lower’ business is. So, you’ve shown that the rich are richer than the poor are poor. You haven’t actually shown any negative effect that these people have on you, much less anything to do with your proposed solutions, or how those would effectively prevent the purported negative link without destroying the economy, etc…..

Ohoni.6057:

No, I wasn’t talking about the current system, I was talking about yours, so it’s not moot. You’ve also just admitted that in your system, the main thing pushing anything toward any state even resembling equilibrium is players not getting the items they want. Very effective.

I’m honestly not sure what you think your point is on this one, but I am curious.

I was originally saying that making it harder for people to ‘do bad deals’ would also make it harder for people to buy and sell loot. Then in response to that, you admitted that the price would approach equilibrium only because nothing was selling due to no one being willing to ‘do bad deals;’ in other words, comparatively little actual trade would happen under your system because no one will fill the other half of an order/listing, and thus no one getting the items they want.

Ohoni.6057:

And yet you’ve spent this entire thread moaning about how the TP is terrible and doesn’t work the way you want it to, and now it becomes ‘just use the TP.’ Now Anet gives you a way to craft it using materials, many of which you can gather, and you moan about it because it uses too many materials. Except ohwait where do those mats come from the open world.

But again, these are market-tradable materials. The entire problem is that it gives those with plenty of gold a leg up on the process over players that don’t have it since they can just buy these materials instantly and effortlessly.

So you have a problem with other people being able to get items first because they have gold.

Ohoni.6057:

I would have no problem with the process if they took [the time it would take to hand-farm all the materials needed for the crafting process] and applied that time to acquiring account-bound, non-fungible materials instead, same exact time if you start at zero, that would be fine, but the gold portion makes it just as much of a gold-chase as just buying the Precursor outright.

You want them to make the entire process account bound so that everyone else that wants to make one this way is forced to do the exact same things. Why? So that people with gold can’t get it before you. So much for coexisting playstyles.

Ohoni.6057:

True. I never enter these discussions with the intention of changing the minds of those who decide to challenge me. That never seems likely, they’re as set in their ways as I am in mine. Rather, the goal is to expose the flaws in their positions, and refine any actual flaws in my own, so that an impartial observer can come away with a better understanding of the situation.

It took you almost 3 pages to begin refining, then you immediately dropped it once I agreed that you were finally getting somewhere.

Ohoni.6057:

I wasn’t questioning whether you wanted it; that was the starting point. I’m suggesting that you reevaluate what you want compared to what you’re willing to put in. It seems you want items, but are unwilling to get what you need for it, and so you ask Anet to do what you think will make it easier for you to get it to suit your playstyle.

Yes, exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page.

Straight-faced.

Ohoni.6057:

What I was demonstrating with those numbers is that 501g was able to buy far more then than it can today.

Which is true, but the buying power of 501g was not really at question, what is more relevant is the difficulty in acquiring it. You do know that there are plenty of players in this game that have been playing months or years and have not acquired more than a few hundred gold. If we go purely by liquid gold in the account, according to Efficiency, even the bottom 50% of players with up to 1000h of time in the game have only about 500g on hand. The bottom 10% are under 140g. That would be after roughly a year and a half averaging two hours a day, which is reasonable for a more casual player.

You do realize that if it was so hard to get 500g, then 500g would have far greater buying power, right? You’re misinterpreting the graph. The median represents the exact middle, or ‘your ticket into the top 50%.’ The median and 50% of players rows are the same, so the same phrase applies. Thus, we can extrapolate to say that 500g is ‘your ticket into the top 99%.’ I think you were arguing as though it were the mean, so lets look at the average for 500-1000h. The average is….2800g, more than or equal to the buy orders of any tier 1 legendary, sans Eternity. Huh, would ya look at that.

Ohoni.6057:

I hope you realize that the average player can list the loot they get as sell orders and buy what they need at buy orders; This ‘ideal’ you are setting up hurts them too.

But if the average player did do that then buy orders would never fill and sell orders would never move until both came together close enough to equilibrium that flipping them would be impossible, so it’s a moot point.

No, I wasn’t talking about the current system, I was talking about yours, so it’s not moot. You’ve also just admitted that in your system, the main thing pushing anything toward any state even resembling equilibrium is players not getting the items they want. Very effective.

Ohoni.6057:

If more people would be harmed by what I’m proposing than would be helped by it, then the markets would not look anything like what they do, therefore, the opposite must be true.

Yes! a good start, but it still needs a bit of work. It still relies on the underlying assumption that the markets would be different if it were not true. You also need to give a good reason for why the current system is so bad Anet would want to allocate the resources to making the change, etc. A good start, still.

It’s just a suggestion, you don’t have to take it. I’m not trying to force a single player RPG down your throat.

It’s “just a suggestion” made way too often to be taken as anything but hostile. [/quote]
If you want to take it as hostile, that’s on you. It’s just that single player RPGs don’t suffer from the problem you’ve been complaining about.

Ohoni.6057:

The new crafting process was never meant to make precursors 300g. They were meant to make a non-RNG, non-TP method, and to maybe reduce the costs of some of them over the long term.

What they were “meant” to do is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is what the players wanted them to do, which was to make them cheaper. A “non RNG, non-TP” method was never needed. If you wanted to avoid RNG, you could just use the TP instead. The alternative that was needed was one that involved negligible gold cost.

And yet you’ve spent this entire thread moaning about how the TP is terrible and doesn’t work the way you want it to, and now it becomes ‘just use the TP.’ Now Anet gives you a way to craft it using materials, many of which you can gather, and you moan about it because it uses too many materials. Except ohwait where do those mats come from the open world.

Ohoni.6057:

What kind of nonsense is this?
Of course the intent behind the implementation is relevant. It’s the only sane way to measure the success or failure of the change.

Whether it accomplishes the intent only measures how well the developers achieved what they wanted to do. If what they wanted to do isn’t what the players wanted from them, then their success or failure at achieving that goal is entirely irrelevant. All that really matters is how closely the result matches up with the players’ expectations, not the developers’ intent.

No, it means that the devs either succeeded or failed, depending on whether they hit their intentions, and you didn’t like the result. You seem to hate the TP in its current form, but you can hardly argue that it failed. If enough people don’t like the result, Anet may decide that its original intent was off, and thus it failed. This doesn’t mean that Anet failed because you didn’t like it.

Ohoni.6057:

The collections actually do something very useful by indexing the price of precursors to materials.

That was already in place, as the price of high-value Precursors was largely tied to the costs of making dozens of rare weapons to toss into the forge. The new system is no more efficient at this, although it may not have found its equilibrium point yet as it’s had less time to do so.

No more efficient? The previous mat index was based on an average from an RNG-based system; I’d guess most precursors that were made this way did not fall especially close to that average. Compare that to this new system, where X, Y, and Z mats will always be able to make precursor N, once per account. I’d say that’s far more efficient.

Ohoni.6057:

Because I’m a human being.

Not even an argument.

Ohoni.6057:

If you are unprepared to get what you need to in order to acquire your goal, maybe it isn’t a good goal for your playstyle.

And once again, this is not a reasonable response. Just because I’m unprepared to do what is currently asked to acquire an item has absolutely nothing to do with whether that item is something I want. I choose to pursue it by pushing for alternative methods of acquisition, rather than giving up and pursuing existing methods that I believe to be unreasonable.

I wasn’t questioning whether you wanted it; that was the starting point. I’m suggesting that you reevaluate what you want compared to what you’re willing to put in. It seems you want items, but are unwilling to get what you need for it, and so you ask Anet to do what you think will make it easier for you to get it to suit your playstyle.

Ohoni.6057:

You were comparing the price of precursors now to their prices more than two years ago. It’s like saying that it’s unfair that I got a lawnmower for fewer $ in 1950 than you can now.

It is, because income levels have not kept pace with inflation. It would have been easier to earn the money necessary to buy a lawn mower in 1950 than it is today.

What I was demonstrating with those numbers is that 501g was able to buy far more then than it can today. To continue the analogy, the cost of the lawnmower in 1950 could have bought more than the cost of a lawnmower now can buy.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m just using gems to gold as a sort of ‘gold standard’ for the comparison of buying power.

And my point is that it’s a flawed measurement, since it has no relationship to actual gameplay effort.

The gem to gold ratio is indirectly set on supply and demand; the more people exchange gems for gold, the more gold you get per gem. Yes, it can be spiked/tanked by a wealthy enough person, but there are enough players doing enough transactions that it finds an equilibrium based on the populace. The populace gets its money from…oh, it’s almost all gameplay effort.

Ohoni.6057:

You missed the point. They have just as much agency to chose between filling a buy order and listing it themselves. It would defeat the point of having an economy if that agency was taken away. And yet, that’s exactly what you want to do.

and again, it would be better to take that agency away, better to “defeat the point of a free market economy,” than to expose unwitting players to clearly bad deals.

Prove that such a system would objectively be better for everybody than the current system and aligns with Anet’s goals. Then you will have a point.

Ohoni.6057:

The goal should be an economy that works for ALL players, not just those savvy enough to take advantage of the less intelligent or invested.

Are you sure that the other players aren’t getting what they want from this system? Can you demonstrate it? That enough players don’t like it for Anet to want to make such a massive change? Would it ultimately serve a point?

Ohoni.6057:

The only people that should ever be selling to buy orders are ones where that particular market is already at balance point or close enough to it, or that absolutely need cash immediately for something, and the only ones that should ever be buying from sell orders should be those who absolutely need those items right that minute.

They should only do it then? Why, and how is this objectively true? I hope you realize that the average player can list the loot they get as sell orders and buy what they need at buy orders; This ‘ideal’ you are setting up hurts them too.

Ohoni.6057:

Players should always be made aware that if they place a buy/sell order at [this price] before they log out, then chances are that the order will be filled by the time they log in the next day, or that if they set it at [this price], chances are that the order will fill within an hour or two. Players should be made aware that the price on this item is on a sharp downward trend, so selling out fast might be a good idea, or that it’s on a sharp upward trend, so waiting it out might be better for them. Certain items should even be flagged as “one to watch” when new recipes get added that use them, or new sources get added that might make them more common.

If Anet wants to add features like this to the TP UI, I’m all for it. I’ve said this several times, I think we can drop this bit.

Ohoni.6057:

The people that already fill buy orders would likely continue to fill buy orders; they want their money now without more thought towards it, and they will still want that.

I honestly doubt there are that many players that “need their money now.” I mean, I’m not super rich or anything, but I haven’t needed gold immediately in about three years now, I’ve always had plenty of surplus to cover whatever immediate purchases I needed to make. There’s very little in this game that demands instant money, it’s not like you have rent to pay or anything. Most people that go for “money now” could probably afford to wait for hours or even days, but don’t understand that this is an option, and worry that they will have the item on the market indefinitely.

I agree, there probably aren’t that many. What I’m saying is that unless you make filling a buy order a pain compared to doing anything else with it, many of the same people will still do the same thing; they already know they could list it and they don’t care.

Ohoni.6057:

It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want. I might suggest a singleplayer RPG though, I think something like that might suit your tastes a bit more.

You might, but you would be wrong. If I preferred single player RPGs to MMOs, then we would not be having this discussion because I would not have spent the last three years playing GW2, and over a decade before that playing other MMOs, but really, I might think that would be obvious, and clearly I was wrong on that as well.

It’s just a suggestion, you don’t have to take it. I’m not trying to force a single player RPG down your throat.

Ohoni.6057:

Legendary items were always meant to be a lengthy process to obtain. The initial implementation did not reflect this. It looks as if ANet is trying to change that with the new tier.

I’m not talking about the new tier. I think the new tier is largely fine, aside from the gold-fungible components. I’m mostly talking about the existing tier here. [/quote]
The new crafting process was never meant to make precursors 300g. They were meant to make a non-RNG, non-TP method, and to maybe reduce the costs of some of them over the long term.

Should be alt + drag

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

So what we should expect to start seeing is the cost of gold to gems get lower and lower with the nerfs to popular activities and the increase of soul bound and account Bound items that have been slowly coming into the game?

My issues lie with the fact that gold to gems cost has risen by 100g over the past 18 or so months. But then, if people buy gems with gold and then buy store item then they are destroyed. So at some point there will be no gems left in the pool. This is a realistic possibility without Anet replenishing the gems in the pool.

We might see a slow in the increase, yes. In fact, it has already dropped off quite a bit since September. As has already been expained, the gem pool emptying isn’t very realistic. The closer it gets to 0, the (exponentially) more expensive buying gems using gold will be. Less people will be willing to pay that much, and more and more people will be willing to convert gems (or $ to gems) into gold, replenishing it. Supply and demand, quite beautiful actually.

Ohoni.6057:

Oh? So you’re claiming that desiring something because of the difficulty of acquiring it is objectively and inherently shameful.

Not at all, and I’m not sure how you would even get to there from the words that I typed. What I said was that it was shameful to value the thing you have because other people do not have it, to value its scarcity. You should value the thing because of what it is, not because of how many other people have it. Taking pleasure in other people’s sadness is just disgusting, no matter how you care to dress it up.

No one is talking about sadness, I don’t know where you got that. You say people should value the thing based on what it is. ‘Should’ indicates that this is your opinion, not something inherent and apart from you (see: objective). I still fail to see why you can judge other people’s desires this way.

Ohoni.6057:

That wasn’t what I was saying. We aren’t competing for who can get Dawn first. I don’t see why you care that I can get Dawn a bit faster by playing more directly towards what I need to get it.

But I don’t care that you get it first. I don’t mind that at all. I mind the people who’s actions make it harder for me to get it, such as by placing higher bids for it than I’m prepared to match.

If you are unprepared to get what you need to in order to acquire your goal, maybe it isn’t a good goal for your playstyle. That aside, prove that TP traders are the ones directly responsible for that.

Ohoni.6057:

You would have a serious point here, if you could prove that a) this is an actual problem, and b) it happens to enough players that Anet should care.

I think it would be difficult to prove otherwise.

So prove it.

Ohoni.6057:

Nevermind the fact that gold-earning techniques have improved quite a lot, as well as inflation. So lets get some perspective using the gem to gold exchange. Dusk buy order was last at 500g on Jan 14, 2013. On the same day, 100 gems sold for 1.18g. 501/1.18 is a long decimal, so I’ll round to 424.5. 424.5*100 = 42,450. So at the time, you would have had to convert almost 42.5k gems into gold. Lets do the same math for now. 952g buy order divided by 10.65g per 100 gems = about 89.4. Multiply by 100, and it’s relatively small, under 9k (8940). Not even close. (data courtesy of gw2spidy.com)

What relevance does that have? The entire point is that people having more gold drives up the gold price of things. Of course the exchange rate of gems goes up as well, more people have more gold to dump into gems. Perhaps it is cheaper to buy gems with cash and use them to buy a Dawn, but that’s a completely irrelevant point.

You were comparing the price of precursors now to their prices more than two years ago. It’s like saying that it’s unfair that I got a lawnmower for fewer $ in 1950 than you can now. The worth of each of those dollars in 1950 is far more than the worth of each dollar now. I’m just using gems to gold as a sort of ‘gold standard’ for the comparison of buying power.

Ohoni.6057:

I was pointing out how absurd your logic becomes when applied evenly. You’ve even argued against your own logic.

That only shows that you didn’t actually understand the point I was making. I’m sorry if I was unclear.

I took the logic behind your point and applied it to a slightly different thing. If you would like to clarify your point, please do so.

Ohoni.6057:

If they chose to sell to a buy order, that was their knowing choice; they have just as much ability to list as a sell order as I do.

No, that’s a false argument. Just because someone agrees to something does not mean that it was a fair deal, similar arguments are used to support those high interest payday loans, the subprime mortgages that crashed the economy, pushing plea bargains on defendants that could likely get off completely with proper representation, etc.

You missed the point. They have just as much agency to chose between filling a buy order and listing it themselves. It would defeat the point of having an economy if that agency was taken away. And yet, that’s exactly what you want to do.

Ohoni.6057:

Just because someone agrees to sell to a buy order does not necessarily mean that they did so fully understanding the risks and rewards involved to the same degree as the person placing that order. If they did, some might still make that choice, but if most players did then the system would not function in favor of flippers.

So what, you want to give them more info on the UI? I’ve already agreed with that, though I doubt it will change too much. The people that already fill buy orders would likely continue to fill buy orders; they want their money now without more thought towards it, and they will still want that.

If you are referring to the trader listing for higher to sell later, it is that foreknowledge and predictive capability that sets him apart.

which is the problem. I’m fine with people being able to turn marginal profits on TP trades, but the profit potential should not allow for players to bring in as much profit as is currently available, just as no one class should be able to just completely roll over every other class in any game mode. [/quote]
It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want.

Ohoni.6057:

Ideally though, making money from money on the trading post wouldn’t even be a thing. Finding things in the wild and selling them for money? Yes. Buying materials, converting them into items and selling those? Sure. Buying items at one price and selling them at a price which turns a profit, even after transaction fees? No, that should not be a thing.

It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want. I might suggest a singleplayer RPG though, I think something like that might suit your tastes a bit more.

Ohoni.6057:

As you say, people can’t be changed. Although I don’t know what gives you the authority to say that their desires and reasons are shameful. Seems like you only want people to be able to do things you agree with; anything else is shameful and looked down upon.

Being happy in yourself only because others have it worse off than you…

Somewhat misleading phrasing, but go on.

…is inherently shameful. That has nothing to do with me, it just. . . is.

Oh? So you’re claiming that desiring something because of the difficulty of acquiring it is objectively and inherently shameful. Would you mind showing how you reach thatt conclusion independent of your personal feelings?

Ohoni.6057:

You do realize that advantages only exist in competition, right? You and I aren’t competing for who will get some item.

So you’re saying that if I put in a buy order for a Dawn at, say, 200g, nobody would “compete” with me by posting a higher buy order than that? So long as one player’s actions can prevent another player from achieving his objectives, it IS competition.

That wasn’t what I was saying. We aren’t competing for who can get Dawn first. I don’t see why you care that I can get Dawn a bit faster by playing more directly towards what I need to get it.

Ohoni.6057:

You missed the point. I’m asking why Player A should care how much gold Player N earns. You seem to care a lot, but not for any actual reason; you haven’t shown that it affects your gameplay.

As I said earlier, the problem is not directly in how much Player N earns, but it is about the relative purchasing power that affords him. When items are a finite resource, priced based on what anyone is willing and able to pay, then having some players willing and able to pay considerably more for things makes it more difficult for other players to acquire those things, and since many items in the game are restricted to either A. buy it off the TP for whatever price the market determines, or B. preposterous RNG, high amounts of wealth pushing option A off the table can represent a serious problem to those players.

You would have a serious point here, if you could prove that a) this is an actual problem, and b) it happens to enough players that Anet should care. Thus far, however, you have shown to be either incredibly averse or downright incapable of substantiating either.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m going to leave out the ad hominem, thank me later. You say items would be more affordable. Prove it. Until you do, I can easily ignore baseless claims like this one.

Before players had thousands of gold, you could get high-end Precursors for well under 500g, and this was when supply was considerably lower than it is today (given that they were just starting to come out and methods for Forge-farming them were not yet fully understood), and demand was likely higher (given that fewer players already had one).

Nevermind the fact that gold-earning techniques have improved quite a lot, as well as inflation. So lets get some perspective using the gem to gold exchange. Dusk buy order was last at 500g on Jan 14, 2013. On the same day, 100 gems sold for 1.18g. 501/1.18 is a long decimal, so I’ll round to 424.5. 424.5*100 = 42,450. So at the time, you would have had to convert almost 42.5k gems into gold. Lets do the same math for now. 952g buy order divided by 10.65g per 100 gems = about 89.4. Multiply by 100, and it’s relatively small, under 9k (8940). Not even close. (data courtesy of gw2spidy.com)

Ohoni.6057:

With that logic, I’m losing out on untold thousands in potential returns by sleeping.

Yes, but some things are necessary. Still, this is part of the reason why DR and daily chests are a positive factor, they reduce the efficiency of playing 24/7 and reduce the incentive to do so.

I was pointing out how absurd your logic becomes when applied evenly. You’ve even argued against your own logic.

Ohoni.6057:

You make it sound as if they looked at 15g on the table, then only picked up 14g. I assure you, if it were that easy it would not exist. In this situation, each player that bought or sold to him did so at a price they found acceptable. This is a concept we have understood for thousands of years.

Yes, but a player accepting a bad deal because he did not understand that a better deal was available, does not make it a good deal. He still got a bad deal, and ideally the game would reduce the potential for that to occur.

If they chose to sell to a buy order, that was their knowing choice; they have just as much ability to list as a sell order as I do. If you are referring to the trader listing for higher to sell later, it is that foreknowledge and predictive capability that sets him apart.

Ohoni.6057:

I remember playing in the Wildstar beta, and their TP was so messed up that you could post items at below vendor value, so I could go on there, buy up piles of materials, walk a few paces to the side and sell them to a vendor and turn a profit instantly. Clearly the person listing the item was fine with his choices as he understood them, but that doesn’t mean that it was a good deal on his end, and ideally the game would better inform him of his options.

I agree, and Gw2 has systems in place that prevent selling below vendor price + fees.

Ohoni.6057:

Players should not have to monitor outside resources or make spreadsheets to determine the best prices to buy and sell things for, that information should be readily apparent to any casual viewer, in the UI itself.

I don’t even disagree. I’m fine with more info on the TP UI.

Swift.1930:

DeShadowWolf.6854:

I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.

For someone to have 10k hours of GW2 over the 3 years it’s been out, they’d have to have been in the game ~40% longer than a full-time employee would have worked during the same amount of years. With all the changes that have been implemented in the past few months, a more-than-full-time gamer is going to be impacted most by those changes – and if people who (assuming it’s true) have 10k in-game hours in 3 years are surfacing to the forums with complaints, the devs have most certainly changed something drastic. Yoiks.

I was being semi-sarcastic. Wanze is the one with 10k hours; I doubt Ohoni does. The latter was claiming that a difference in wealth had nothing to do with time spent, thus the sarcasm.

Ohoni.6057:

If lots of people had said reward then it wouldn’t be that special would it? people would be less inclined to want it because so many others do – there are goods in every market that are only valuable because they’re exclusive in nature – it’s the classic : this thing is cool because I have it and you don’t.

That’s toxic behavior, it does not benefit anyone and should exist as little as possible. Things should be desired because they are intrinsically cool, not because few other people have them. People that only want things because other people don’t have them should be ashamed of themselves, not rewarded.

As you say, people can’t be changed. Although I don’t know what gives you the authority to say that their desires and reasons are shameful. Seems like you only want people to be able to do things you agree with; anything else is shameful and looked down upon.

Ohoni.6057:

Then what? I would suggest that within 1 week the wealth distribution would be exactly what it was before your magical intervention. People are rich and poor in this game because they choose to be rich and poor. Anything the rich players are doing the poor players can do too.

Yes, the the things that rich people currently do should be made less efficient, less effective at taking money from the poor.

I really need a button to auto-add this each time…That’s your opinion, you can have it. You just can’t force everyone else into the same opinion.

Ohoni.6057:

Ascended is what, 5-7% higher stats? Less? Personally I never really noticed the difference. Outside of fractals, I think you’d have a hard time arguing that ascended is so ‘highly useful’ that it’s THAT important to have. Indeed, the only reason I got ascended was for fractals, quite some time ago. I would not get it just for the stat boost, it’s very little.

Have you watched any videos of raid boss fights? Even highly coordinated groups making few mistakes often beat raid bosses within a few seconds of a total failure. That 5-7% difference seems like it would be quite significant in those cases, if it takes them say five minutes of constant burn to kill a boss using peak stats, then that 5-7% would equate to about 15 seconds of burn time.

That may be true. From what I’ve heard listening to WP talk about the raid wing is that it’s more the fact that there are half a dozen mechanics and each one has to be played into. Raw DPS is only an issue because you have to spend time dealing with the boss fight mechanics.

Ohoni.6057:

Legendaries were never meant for everyone and their dog to have. They were meant to be long-term, expensive goals for the people that wanted that item to work towards. You appear to be incapable of understanding this, or even basic economics.

It’s been three years, I think that’s plenty long by most accounts.

And that’s why people that had interest in a longer goal now have it. You haven’t refuted anything.

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t like his playstyle. So what. Both playstyles can coexist.

They can, they totally can, so long as they are in balance, so long as one is not ridiculously more effective at returning gold to the player than the other. So long as they are out of balance, however, more work is needed to correct that.

sigh Again, that is your opinion. It isn’t everyone’s and it certainly isn’t Anet’s. You can’t force everyone else into it.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, knowledge, skill, intuition, and research set him apart from those other people in this area. I don’t see your argument.

Again, the point is that having “knowledge, skill, intuition, and research” over this one aspect of the game gives such a massively overwhelming advantage over players who have equivalent “knowledge, skill, intuition, and research” over any other aspect of the game, aspects that are much more central to what the game actually is than the Trading Post is.

You do realize that advantages only exist in competition, right? You and I aren’t competing for who will get some item. You can play the game as you want at the pace you want. Thinking of the game as a competition and playing for relaxed fun are generally not compatible. You seem to think that Anet should change the game so that the two are the same.

Ohoni.6057:

You aren’t going to hit a goal like a precursor very often. If you’re just trying to gather mats for a component, you can always make your own goal (e.g. hit 150 ectos by the end of the week).

If you’re going to be making that argument then the opposite one is equally true, that Precursors could be a more reasonable goal, someone that most players are expected to achieve every few months of gameplay, but that if you need a more long term goal then that, then you could become determined to get 50K Ectos or whatever floats your boat.

You missed the point. I was saying that you don’t hit a major milestone every week or two, and that if you want weekly or biweekly goals to meet, you can set them yourself. This also goes back to the idea that legendaries aren’t meant to be for everyone and their dog, a concept which you fail to grasp. For some people, amassing large amounts of resources is keeping them playing; a guildie of mine is dedicated to stockpiling iron and platinum. For a lot of people though, I don’t think that’s enough. They want that to go towards something.

Ohoni.6057:

Why do you even care how much gold other people are making? Play at your own pace, the game isn’t a race. Person A getting Item 246 before Player B is irrelevant. The god-class analogy only works if everything is competitive; hint, pve isn’t all about competition.

Again, the TP is ENTIRELY PVP. Every transaction is you either winning or losing against the player who made that sale possible. Either you got a better deal than he did, or he got a better deal than you.

You missed the point. I’m asking why Player A should care how much gold Player N earns. You seem to care a lot, but not for any actual reason; you haven’t shown that it affects your gameplay.

Ohoni.6057:

Other players having more gold does impact me, because it means that they can afford to buy items that I cannot. If they could not afford to but those items, then those items would not be listed at such high prices, and they would be more affordable to me.

I’m going to leave out the ad hominem, thank me later. You say items would be more affordable. Prove it. Until you do, I can easily ignore baseless claims like this one.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, if it were a non-competitive system, if the prices were relatively fixed, and even the most expensive items were capped out at reasonably low levels, so that having thousands of gold would be irrelevant because it wouldn’t mean that you could afford anything that anyone else couldn’t, then it would be an entirely different situation, but that is not the game we have.

The failure to understand economics, the reason for an economy, and input v output is self-evident.

Ohoni.6057:

No, it does require a net loss. Say on one side you have one savvy trader, and on the other you have three less savvy ones, each trading one item. If the savvy trader buys and resells their items, and earns a total profit on that transaction of 1g, leaving TP fees aside from the moment, then that would mean that the other three players would have had to lose out on a total of 1g in potential returns.

With that logic, I’m losing out on untold thousands in potential returns by sleeping.

Ohoni.6057:

If they did not leave that money on the table, it would not be available for the savvy player to scoop up. His gains MUST come at their expense, otherwise the gains would not exist to be had.

You make it sound as if they looked at 15g on the table, then only picked up 14g. I assure you, if it were that easy it would not exist. In this situation, each player that bought or sold to him did so at a price they found acceptable. This is a concept we have understood for thousands of years.
“Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.” -Publilius Syrus (85-43 BCE)

Ohoni.6057:

So saying that people believe prices are fair means that people believe prices won’t change much. I think even someone with almost no understanding of economics can understand that fluctuations/spikes/cliffs happen. Are you going to blame me for people believing lies that they weren’t even told?

I’m not blaming you for anything, I’m blaming the system for not fully taking human nature into account in a way that would benefit the average player.

I never knew it was human nature to believe lies they weren’t even told. You seem to think that Anet should bend over backwards while falling from a cliff to make sure that everything absolutely benefits every single player to the maximum. Not that you’ve shown it hurts them in the first place.

Ohoni.6057:

Is this really how far you’ve gone? Everything but high fracs can be done in exos, max runes/sigils/food is only important if you’re tryharding raids or super care about dps. You can always look for more underrated ones, those are prolly way cheaper than strength, hoelbrak, et cetera.

More and more of the new content is pushing the limits of “just Exotics.” You CAN do these things in Exotics, but Ascended does make it easier, and when it’s group content that can succeed or fail based on DPS output and whether or not you can stay up, having the very best gear available IS becoming more and more a matter of courtesy towards those around you.

Remember, this was in the context of account bound collections, not raids or fracs. I don’t think asc gear vs exotic gear matters for those collections. At all. On raids, I don’t think they were intended to be done by everyone. I think about 5ish percent was the number? I don’t remember.

Ohoni.6057:

Where do you think such fungible materials come from? Why, they come from gear and nodes found all over Tyria! What fun!

But again, acquiring them directly is extremely inefficient, in some cases it requires ridiculous RNG, in others just a lot of pointless busywork.

Point me to a couple high-RNG items seriously needed for precursor crafting. In making Dusk, I found the most limiting resources to be iron, platinum, and mithril, all mats that commonly occur in harvestable nodes in the open world. And you want whatever you do to to give you equally efficient progress towards whatever goal you may want. /facepalm

Ohoni.6057:

Where it all goes wrong is when a player can buy the item that the first person is selling, and then just put it back up at a higher price than the first guy was asking for it, causing the second guy to have to spend more than he otherwise could have had the third guy not gotten into the process.

You don’t even understand what you’re trying to attack, so let me correct you. Player C places a buy order (probably overcutting the top price), then re-lists the item (undercutting or listing at a price that person thinks the player demand will reach). In this scenario, Player A is getting a slightly better deal for his item and Player B is either getting a slightly better deal or is paying what player demand decided was a fair price. The ONLY way A gets more money or B saves more money is by actively making a different choice. Beyond not understanding this, you haven’t proven that any of this is ‘going wrong.’

Ohoni.6057:

So you want the devs to create a specific temporary sink/faucet, stating exactly what they wanted to do with each item, all so that you can have less volatile prices around the time the content is released. This sounds like entitlement if I’ve ever heard it.

Aside from throwing around the word “entitlement,” you haven’t said why this would be a bad thing. The positive side is pretty obvious, what would the negative be?

It’s like asking someone to bake you cookies that you’ll end up throwing away the majority of, just because the ice cream is at room temperature. You are so focused on you having what you want whatever the cost is to others that you can’t see how pointless the whole endeavor is, how much other people have to do for it, and how self-centered the whole thing is. Long story short, if you can’t afford a goal and don’t want to adjust your play towards getting it, either wait until it’s cheaper, or find another goal.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s an economic commonality. I don’t think you expect the world governments to spend money doing things to make sure that a new economic report doesn’t change prices too much; why expect Anet to do so?

Because they wouldn’t have to spend any money to do so. Their money would be the same either way. The government does take action to blunt the effects of various disasters, as they should.

Yes, governments blunt disasters, like bailing out large companies in the 2008 recession. The only person that thinks price spikes are a disaster is you. If you don’t think developing new sinks, plotting out how they will work and how much they should drain, and how much needs to be drained out of every market they want to change doesn’t take up the time of employees that could be working on content, then I don’t know what you do.

Ohoni.6057:

Why should Anet bend over backwards for your temporary unhappiness with a temporary change in price?

You say “your temporary unhappiness,” as if this is just about me. If it were just about me then they definitely shouldn’t do anything about it. But it’s about everyone in the game, plenty of people are complaining about the prices of things that we can safely assume will be cheaper in six months, and for each of those people there are probably thousands more who are thinking it but not being vocal.

So in other words, we can assume there are untold thousands of people that agree with you. Prove it.

Ohoni.6057:

The HoT-related price spikes are hurting EVERY player currently trying to form a guild hall, gear up for the new raid, gear up their new characters, learn to Scribe, all sorts of various things that involve resources that are currently in unusual demand. And it’s all entirely predictable, if you know what incoming recipes will take, and you know how many sources for those ingredients there will be, you can tell which ones will spike in price, any half-baked market watcher can do that without even knowing the exact recipes involved. So knowing that, they should cause temporary influxes of materials, ones designed to dry up as demand starts to fall to the stable level, so that the prices would stay at the stable level throughout the process.

If it was really so easy as ‘any half-baked market watcher, ’then I think we’d have seen a smaller price spike as those people unloaded their investments. So Anet should closely regulate every single market to make sure none of them go slightly to high or slightly too low, just so that you can buy them at a price you want. Great.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, I said that. I’m not saying I’m the populist side, I’m saying neither of us are. You say your side has the ‘overwhelming majority of the players.’ Prove it. I don’t think you can. The last sentence doesn’t even make sense.

I’m not saying that the majority of players necessarily agree with me, or are even aware of the issue. I’m saying that the majority of players would benefit from some move in my direction, whether or not they know or understand it.

Demonstrate that the current system is directly hurting players, and how your propositions would fix this without breaking a ton of other things, and would directly benefit players. Then you have a case. As of right now, your arguments are a pile of assertions and opinions, not backed by anything else.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s equivalent to beating the full raid.” I’m not totally closed to the idea, I just doubt Anet can do it well and I think it takes away from the value of the item; that’s why we have pvp-only skins for example.

I think that if there are activities that they can’t find reasonable alternatives for, then those activities shouldn’t have fancy rewards in the first place. Nothing says that raids must have fancy rewards, they are just a type of content that some people like and some people don’t. Let the people who enjoy them enjoy them, but that shouldn’t mean that those who don’t should be cut off from armor they might want.

Again, reasonable is still a useless term. The point is, raids are hard content that Anet is pushing. In order to be worthwhile to many players, they have to have exclusive rewards. Thus, prestige. Or would you like the people doing the hardest, newest content to get 5 blues and a 2 greens for their hours spent practicing and perfecting their strategies?

Ohoni.6057:

No one is forcing you to engage in activities, that is purely your choice. If you find the only way to acquire an item is through content you don’t like, perhaps find another item to pursue.

That paragraph is like a very complex oxymoron.

Even if it is, the whole point of an oxymoron is a statement that appears contradictory but isn’t really. You haven’t refuted anything.

Ohoni.6057:

You missed the point. The point is, someone is always complaining about every change Anet makes; it isn’t a sign of anything more than a diverse playerbase.

People only complain about the bad stuff, because it’s bad and should be fixed. If people disagree on an issue, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the path ANet chose is the correct one, they need to determine how much of the population falls to either side of the argument.

You’re still missing the point. Take this thread as an example. You haven’t actually demonstrated that anything is bad or harmful, you’ve just stated that it is. People don’t only complain about bad things, they complain about things they don’t like. The two are not equivalent.

Ohoni.6057:

First of all, precursor crafting wasn’t originally meant to reduce the costs (although I think it did, I haven’t fully looked),

There have been whole threads about this, but it basically boils down to “if reducing the cost was not ANet’s original intent, then they completely missed the boat.” Players wanted lower costs, if ANet does not achieve lower costs, then they have failed the players, whatever their intention was.

I’m not going to bother arguing over Anet’s intention, it’s a self-defeating topic. I spent about 700g in mats and money on mats to create Dusk. Considering that over the past year it has hovered between 900g and 1400g, you can hardly say that didn’t lower the cost.

Ohoni.6057:

but rather to provide a marked, continuous progression towards a precursor.

We already has that, it was the little gold number at the bottom of the inventory screen.

The point was, the TP price fluctuated and could rise. This doesn’t change, Dusk will always need the same amount of deld, and thus the same amount of mats. The prices of those mats may rise or fall, but putting 10 deld into it will get you as much closer regardless.

Ohoni.6057:

What you really seem to want is the same precursor in the same time frame, just cheaper so you don’t have to spend as much time on it.

Cheaper so I don’t have to spend as much money on it. Time is not a factor, someone who already has the money doesn’t need to spend any time on it.

Time is money, as the saying goes. If time isn’t a factor (that is, you are willing to spend as long as it takes), then I don’t understand what is preventing you from using that time to get the money. The reason I have Dusk now rather than being in-progress is just a matter of the fact that I had been saving up for it well before HoT.

Ohoni.6057:

Every precursor should have an identical gold cost to crafting it, and the effort should be in the actual tasks involved, not in whether or not you have enough gold on hand. There should be nothing about the process for which your amount of gold would make the task easier or more difficult.

That’s your opinion. I doubt it would retain value for precursors the way Anet wants them to, and its clearly not Anet’s opinion, but you can hold that opinion as much as you want.

Ohoni.6057:

The goal is just balance, for the amount of gold that an intelligent and skilled player can draw into his personal account from the TP should be no higher than the amount that an equally skilled and intelligent player can draw from active adventuring content, over the same amount of hours played, and the same level of active engagement in the content (ie, just standing there and managing the TP UI would be equivalent to Silverwastes chest farming, higher engagement activities would be more rewarding than that).

More ‘shoulds’ and ‘I thinks.’ I’m seriously having doubts if your position is based on anything more.

Ohoni.6057:

That was not a premise in the original comparison, but I digress. This God-class, however, is only being discussed in the context of competitive pvp, a race. There is no such thing. There is no competition between you, me, and Wanze over who can reach something first. If you do view it as a race, then you don’t seem to be as concerned with winning as with the fact that others are.

Nope. You’re trying to warp the discussion into your own pace. If you then bend your own description back to, say, sPvP, then it “wouldn’t matter who wins and loses, it would just be about how much fun you have.”

Unless you read what I wrote. Then you might understand that I was saying that it’s a bad comparison because pve isn’t a race, whereas pvp is. And ultimately, yes, who wins and loses is only important if 1) it’s in a tournament, or 2) you give that priority. If you want to play pvp just for the fun of fighting a real player, that’s fine.

Ohoni.6057:

The way the economy is set up, it is no less competitive than sPvP, because anyone who has a net profit on the TP must do so by one or more other players having a net loss. For you to make money, another player has to lose money. ~snip~ If I’m prevented from having the things I want,

It isn’t a net loss. Lets take a quote from you:

If there was a dungeon you could run that rewarded 10g for completion, but they charged you 1g to enter, that would be ANet giving you 9g, not them taking 1g from you.

Go on:

but they are allowed to have them due to unbalanced mechanisms, then that offends my sense of justice.

So other people making money certain ways offends you, so it should be changed? That’s almost a new one.

Ohoni.6057:

Let’s look at, say, high-end raid skins for clearing the whole raid. Part of the point of having those skins is for the prestige, for being able to see that a person was able to clear the whole raid.

I reject that entire concept. People that believe that having a rare skin imbues them with any additional “prestige” can live in their sad little world, but it shouldn’t prevent everyone else from having access to styles that they like.

Not everyone rejects this idea, some people relish in it. But you would force your rejection of the idea on everyone. No.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, but what they view as “too pricey” seems to be well out of step with what the community views as “too pricey,” as evidenced by numerous threads on the matter. Whatever metrics they are using to determine fair pricing, they aren’t the right ones.

What, because some people whined on the forums? Unless it’s a pretty large backlash, that is a terrible reason to change things; the forum has always been the place for griping, on whatever matter. As to the metrics, perhaps Anet isn’t looking to give everyone the ability to get whatever they want whenever by playing anything for any time. Personally, I might like to know what metrics they use, but that’s just me being curious.

Ohoni.6057:

‘Reasonable rate’ remains a vague, undefined, subjective, and therefore useless term. You only seem to want to talk about macroeconomics when it supports your side.

I don’t particularly want to talk about macroeconomics at all, I personally don’t really care, but if I don’t address it them people start whining “but oh, the inflation!” I acknowledge that it’s an issue that needs to be addressed at some level for the health of the game, but ultimately I view it as a tertiary concern.

Your ability to buy the items you want won’t matter if it takes weeks for things to sell, items don’t move quickly towards a good price, and some items never hit equilibrium. Macroeconomics affect your personal experience bubble a lot more than you seem to think they do. You included my sentence about reasonable in the quote. Address it.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s your playstyle, and that’s fine. If you want to aim for those other goals, go ahead. But don’t invalidate everyone else’s playstyles just because you don’t like them.

I don’t have a problem with any playstyle that does not come into conflict with mine. For example, I wouldn’t mind if some people wanted a PvP server, but I would mind if people could PK me in the open world without being able to opt out of it. It’s not possible to opt out of the PKs on the Trading Post, like it or not, the economy shifts according to those mechanisms and players have to interact with them if they want to play the game in any reasonable fashion. ~snip~

You STILL haven’t actually given any evidence that traders like Wanze actually hurt the game. Until you do that, this is meaningless blabber. Prove your assertions.

Ohoni.6057:

If ANet would simply offer vendors that would buy and sell items at a fair market value it would save a lot of trouble, but so far they have not.

That would destroy..hmm..any reason for having an economy and any system of RNG, and…

Ohoni.6057:

People tend to believe that when they see a price, that is a stable price that nobody is likely to beat. That if they sell something at the buy order price that they wouldn’t be likely to sell it for more than that, that if they buy something at the sell order price, that buy orders for it would never be filled, and that neither would fluctuate significantly.

So saying that people believe prices are fair means that people believe prices won’t change much. I think even someone with almost no understanding of economics can understand that fluctuations/spikes/cliffs happen. Are you going to blame me for people believing lies that they weren’t even told?

Ohoni.6057:

In fact – I’ve seen very few people even pointing fingers at it ( like you for example) so as far as I see it this system is a success.

The thing is, the problem isn’t people who point it out publicly, the problem isn’t even people that realize the problem. The problem is people who don’t know why, but just aren’t enjoying the game as much as they could, they just feel that the goals they have are too far out of reach, the other players are too far ahead of them, and they quietly give up without ever making a ripple (or paying ANet any more money).

You have not demonstrated that such a group exists in significant enough numbers for Anet to care. Until you do so, this is just a pile of unsubstantiated claims.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

I tend to agree. One of the causes of hopelessness is the knowledge that things aren’t likely to improve, that the goal posts will either stay in place or move away from you, rarely closer. That’s one of the reasons the Precursor Crafting system offended me, because I’d assumed that after three years, they would make a genuine effort to make Precursors more easily available, when instead they just made it more work on top of the existing gold costs.

As far as I know, it was never meant to make it cheaper. It was meant to create solid progression. I can’t speak for the other precursors, having not looked, but it made Dusk much cheaper for me. Unless you want to buy all the stuff right now and have it done asap no matter the cost.

Ohoni.6057:

Same with raids, in previous games you could assume that even if you can’t do the meta raid right now, eventually it would become trivialized and you could. In this game, they claim that the raids will never be devalued by future changes, so if you can’t do it now (by “now” I mean within the next few months, once good strats have been nailed down), then you likely never will.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have interesting and hard boss fights forever than a couple hard boss fights that no longer matter in half a year. The former sounds much more fun and engaging to me.

Ohoni.6057:

The point is people should never feel fully satisfied in game – lest they might simply play an hour or so for the gameplay and log off.

Perhaps, but they should consistently be hitting goals, so that they don’t feel like they aren’t making any progress.

You aren’t going to hit a goal like a precursor very often. If you’re just trying to gather mats for a component, you can always make your own goal (e.g. hit 150 ectos by the end of the week).

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, temporarily ascended gear has become more difficult to obtain (who would have guessed this might happen when a majority of players try to gear up in a very short amount of time, prices might spike… /sarcasm.

Again, the fact that we can assume that is an indictment of the situation, not an excuse. If a price spike is predictable then an anti-spike mechanism should be put into place to prevent it.

I’m beginning to wonder if your arguments are based on anything more than a series of “I thinks” and “shoulds.” The economy will balance out eventually, it is only your instant gratification urges that need that to change.

Ohoni.6057:

One thing my flipping history, that i posted earlier, demonstrates, is that people just make the wrong choices when selling their loot.

Which goes back to what I was saying about the current system being unfair to players who lack the skill, knowledge, or interest in competing on the TP. Again, it’s like having one class that can dominate if played right, but is worthless when played poorly, and makes all other classes worthless in comparison, so if you do not enjoy the god-class, too bad, you’re playing the god-class anyways or getting left in the dust.

Why do you even care how much gold other people are making? Play at your own pace, the game isn’t a race. Person A getting Item 246 before Player B is irrelevant. The god-class analogy only works if everything is competitive; hint, pve isn’t all about competition.

Ohoni.6057:

Now, if everybody would be able to get 50% more for his loot, i dont think people would complain that they dont get enough.
Its down to wrong personal choices by the players and you expect Anet to step in.

Yes. At the very minimum the interface could do a better job of informing players of their options, like having built in volume metrics that would make clear to the casual players how quickly items sell at the sell prices, and history tracking that would show where the item’s price has been over time, and perhaps even a prediction of where it might go based on reasonable expectations that someone such as yourself would be making.

This has been discussed before, and it would be beneficial, I agree.

Ohoni.6057:

It would be the same to ask Anet do remove the dodging mechanic because you are bad at it and nerf all incoming damage by 50% to compensate.

If I felt that it was a major balance problem, I might, but personally I don’t feel that way about the game as they’ve designed it.

maybe you missed what he was saying. I bolded a key word so hopefully you understand.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~
With today’s gamer demographic a lot of things have changes – games cannot remain relevant through gameplay alone – they must have a form of progression, they must have a carrot on a stick.

I’m not arguing for a reduction in carrots, sticks, or their availability. I’m saying that their availability should be more evenly balanced. I’m saying that if some people can gain them relatively easily, then all people should be able to gain them relatively easily, that no methods of earning things should be significantly superior to any other.

The stick is 20ft, your arm is ~3ft, and you seem to want the stick brought closer to you when you see other people getting the carrot by being willing to move. Maybe, just maybe, you should either get your buns moving, or choose a carrot with a closer stick. If a legendary takes too much time and gold for you, maybe just aim for a few BL skins or something.

Ohoni.6057:

If a player buys a listing from me, i basically got that gold from Anet.

Yes.

No. He was given that money by a player, who may have been given that money from Anet or from another player. Anet played no deciding factor in him getting the money. Random players did. Random players != Anet.

Ohoni.6057:

If that player gets a gold reward at the end of the dungeon its from the dungeon and not from Anet.

No, I was just sarcastically referencing your “ANet didn’t give me that TP money” argument. I thought that was obvious from the context, sorry.

Your logic is flawless; things that don’t exist don’t have flaws. You can’t claim Anet is responsible for every transaction on the TP, they did nothing to cause it.

Ohoni.6057:

Its funny how you expect Anet to cater to your microeconomic needs and disregard macroconomic consequences but once i give a microeconomic transaction example, you start bringing in

I’ve never said they should disregard macroeconomic consequences, I’ve repeatedly said that they need to keep those in mind, my point is just that they can’t ONLY keep the macro in mind, they need to make sure the system works at the micro level as well. I think they need to maintain plenty of sinks and faucets to keep the system stable at the macro level, they just also need to keep an eye out to make sure that these systems do not have disproportionate micro-level impacts on individual players. A stable macro economy is better than a chaotic one, but it doesn’t automatically mean that everything is fine.

And you would destroy the macroeconomy so that you can have what you want when you want it, inexpensively.

Ohoni.6057:

Whatever makes YOU happy in game, makes me unhappy in game.

And I’m fine with that. You can’t please everyone. I think it’s fair to say that in an adventure game like this one, it’s better to keep the adventurers happy at the expense of the daytraders than to do the opposite. ~snip~

You missed the point. Let me add the second half of the quote:

So I think Anet should make additional changes to the game that you dont like in order to enhance my game experience because they should value my personal point of view.

He’s pointing out that what your argument boils down to is: “I don’t like this part of the game, therefore change it.”

Ohoni.6057:

If the average player wanted to be more successful at the TP the average player should put in the effort to improve his understanding of the in game market and then attempt to better his understanding of economics.

But my point is that the average player does not want to do that and should not have to.

He doesn’t have to. No one is forcing him to. But go on

He should be able to make just as much money doing random adventure game activities as he can on the trading post. He should not have to learn how to use the TP effectively in order to make competitive amounts of money in the game, everything else should be equally as rewarding. If he wants to learn to TP, he can. If he doesn’t want to, he shouldn’t have to, and yet be just as well off for it.

Should, should, should. All of that is your opinion, you are entitled to it. But don’t shove it done other people’s throats. I do need to use that phrase a lot, don’t I?

Ohoni.6057:

It would be better if LOTS of players had that carrot and were showing it off, rather than a select few that mostly spend their time staring at UI in Lion’s Arch with their fancy weapons stowed anyway.

It would? Why? How so? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of it being a shiny carrot?

Ohoni.6057:

The fact that most people can’t gain them easily is a good thing because then they’ll have to keep chasing them. If they got the carrots easily there would be more pressure on the developers to create new carrots or better carrots.

Again, a fair argument, but if most players can’t earn them easily then no players should be able to earn them easily. Whatever the outcome, it should be balanced.

Again, only your opinion, but go on.

Personally, I think the old legendaries have had three years, those carrots are getting a little moldy, it wouldn’t hurt to let anyone have them that wants one (with a reasonable, but not excessive amount of effort). Maybe the totally new ones they’re adding could take a bit longer to trickle into the population, but I’d say they’ve gotten their money’s worth out of the originals.

Reasonable remains just as vapid, subjective, and useless as it was when you first used it. Now, let me go back to imagining the massive, angry backlash if Anet were to make the gen 1 legendaries easier…

Going to continue from earlier posts, then get to new stuff.

What is “required” and what is “highly useful” is a matter of debate and pointless to argue within this discussion, but suffice it to say that whether they are right or wrong, a large number of players consider ascended gear to be advantageous over exotic.

~snip~ What has changed is that the content does more damage now, making highest possible stats more valuable, and existing means of acquiring those highest possible stats have become more expensive and/or rare.

Ascended is what, 5-7% higher stats? Less? Personally I never really noticed the difference. Outside of fractals, I think you’d have a hard time arguing that ascended is so ‘highly useful’ that it’s THAT important to have. Indeed, the only reason I got ascended was for fractals, quite some time ago. I would not get it just for the stat boost, it’s very little.

Ohoni.6057:

Which is intricately interwoven with the games economy and has to be expensive for precursors to keep their value

Sure, for Precursors to keep their value. Which is neither a necessary, nor positive thing. It’s like saying “well we can’t build dams on that river, it might make it less likely that a flood would wipe out the surrounding farms!”

Legendaries were never meant for everyone and their dog to have. They were meant to be long-term, expensive goals for the people that wanted that item to work towards. You appear to be incapable of understanding this, or even basic economics.

Ohoni.6057:

I’ve bolded some of the most obvious nonsense. If you do not understand why scarcity and value is important in precursors, the limit of your economic understanding is more frightening than expected. Then again you’ve proven this over and over again.

Scarcity is irrelevant to Precursors. Precursors are not important because they are scarce, they are important because they can be turned into Legendaries, ~snip~ This remains true whether only a few people have them, or everyone has them. For people who do only want them because of some perceived “better than that other guys who doesn’t have one” value, well kitten those guys, they’re jerks anyways.

I’m not sure if I even need to add anything here…

Ohoni.6057:

I’m curious what you do during those 7 hours a day. Is that time spent actively engaged in content, or is it time spent hitting “craft” and then sitting back for ten minutes while a queue empties and then repeat, or standing in front of the forge and doubleclicking inventory items over and over. I mean, those are certainly activities, but they are hardly above that “chatting in Lion’s Arch and expecting to get a Legendary” that the elitists so often use as their straw men. Even Silverwaste chest farming is a more active playstyle (and I am not a fan of that either).

You don’t like his playstyle. So what. Both playstyles can coexist.

Ohoni.6057:

10g an hour is still more than most players average, those who are not actively farming the most gold-efficient routes. TP farming should not be comparable to the most efficient ways of earning gold from adventuring, it should be comparable to the least efficient methods, because it requires the least investment in the actual core gameplay.

That is your opinion, you are entitled to it. Don’t shove it down everyone else’s throats.

Ohoni.6057:

Its on Ohoni anyways to prove that rewards on the trading post are too high.

Well, I just heard from one poster who claims to have made 6875g from trading alone, that’s well more than I’ve heard from most other players.

Over several hundred hours (650+), using skill, knowledge, and research that other people don’t do/have.

Ohoni.6057:

You can’t just “set a higher price” and expect to get it back without understanding the system. If you try, you’ll just end up with an item languishing on the TP for months, years, or indefinitely and lost posting fees. To actually make the TP work to your benefit, you need to understand what “higher price” is feasible, a point at which it will eventually sell, and you need to understand how long that may take. Some items you can set slightly below the existing sell price, or even a bit above it, and expect it to sell within 24 hours. Others, you could list at 10% below the existing sell price and it would still never sell because it’s on a downward trend. Most people who buy things for a sell price don’t understand that they could set a buy price for it and recieve the item by the next time they log in at a fraction of the price.

Yes, knowledge, skill, intuition, and research set him apart from those other people in this area. I don’t see your argument.

Ohoni.6057:

TL/DR It’s not a problem with the system Anet designed. The problem is people who want things handed to them with as little effort and delay as possible.

And again, you can only design better systems, not better people. People will be people, you can’t “fix” people, to you need to design the systems to account for human behavior, to work for all people, regardless of how people behave.

Yes, and people like Wanze are supplying what those people want. Pretty much the only person that sees this as a problem that needs “fixing” is you.

Ohoni.6057:

No matter what you do, part of the playerbase will always feel happy or unhappy with your decision. Simply because there is a multitude of players with different opinions and desires.

Sure, but it’s still important to understand why they are upset, and make best efforts to make as many of them happy as possible. A system that by the admission of its practitioners only rewards a tiny fraction of the population and should maybe be adjusted for the benefit of everyone else instead.

And, pray tell, what is this golden method of redistributing the game’s wealth and earnings to the poor populace who are so damaged by the wealth of the wealthy?
Because as far as I can tell, there is none.

Ohoni.6057:

All of the examples you just mentioned are affected by temporary price spikes which will correct themselves in the longrun.

Even if you adjust for the price spikes, and assume that they will come down over time, the gold requirements for Precursor crafting would be considerable even at pre-HoT levels.

And besides, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, ANet bears responsibility for price spikes as well. They can estimate that certain items will be in unusual demand over a given period of time, and should provide short term faucets to counterbalance that demand, such as those silk-dropping bags they had during the LA invasion that tanked cloth markets for a bit. when you dump a ton of new sinks into the economy, dump a bunch of short term faucets as well, so that the system is designed to balance out eventually AND to quickly counterbalance short term spikes.

First of all, precursor crafting wasn’t originally meant to reduce the costs (although I think it did, I haven’t fully looked), but rather to provide a marked, continuous progression towards a precursor. What you really seem to want is the same precursor in the same time frame, just cheaper so you don’t have to spend as much time on it. Anet wants these items to maintain their value, at least to some extent. I would recommend reexamining (a) if this item is feasible for you, (b) how much time you’re willing to expend on it, © how long you’re willing to wait, or (d) any combination of those.

Ohoni.6057:

Well, aside from the Precursors, you can more easily gear up in peak equipment (full ascended with ideal runes/sigils) using gold, which makes any achievement-based progress easier. You can also buy peak food, which also helps. ~snip~

Is this really how far you’ve gone? Everything but high fracs can be done in exos, max runes/sigils/food is only important if you’re tryharding raids or super care about dps. You can always look for more underrated ones, those are prolly way cheaper than strength, hoelbrak, et cetera.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ But again, the biggest outrage was over the collections you seem least interested in discussing, the Precursor collections, which require hundreds of gold in fungible materials.

Where do you think such fungible materials come from? Why, they come from gear and nodes found all over Tyria! What fun!

Ohoni.6057:

Or you know, they could just let the market find it’s own equalibrium instead of poking around and increasing volatility even more.

that takes time though, and in the interim, people cannot advance those activities without spending excessive amounts of money. Better to keep it balanced throughout. The volatility would be as shortlived as the initial volatility whenever they make changes, especially if they were clear in communicating the specific changes they were making, and what they expected the markets to do in reaction. The first time they do this, the markets might react a bit more, but once people know the drill the markets shouldn’t even blip in response, they should just settle into the “new normal” within a matter of hours and stay there.

So you want the devs to create a specific temporary sink/faucet, stating exactly what they wanted to do with each item, all so that you can have less volatile prices around the time the content is released. This sounds like entitlement if I’ve ever heard it.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m quite sure arenanet has certain values in mind for items and timetables for these items to reach said value. If this isnot achieved in a timely manner, THEN they might interfere.

And that’s pretty much the least they could do, but they could do more and lead to more happy players. They choose not to, so when spikes happen, you can’t just say “well, spikes will spike, wait them out,” the spikes only exist because they are deliberately allowed to exist. It’s not a natural disaster, it’s a poorly designed disaster management system.

It’s an economic commonality. I don’t think you expect the world governments to spend money doing things to make sure that a new economic report doesn’t change prices too much; why expect Anet to do so? Why should Anet bend over backwards for your temporary unhappiness with a temporary change in price?

I have more, but it’s rather late and I’m tired. More in the morning.

Ohoni.6057:

In fact, if I did have tons of surplus gold, I would actually pursue ALL the Legendary Precursor quests. The main thing holding me back from bothering with them is because I know that each would require me to dump phat stacks before I could continue the process, and I don’t want to dump those stacks.

Or you can acquire the resources over time directly. As I said earlier, Dusk took ~90 deld. That involves mithril, iron, and platinum. There are guides out there for harvesting rich nodes that can net you quite a few of those. But if you aren’t willing to put the time in to get the resources for it, I would reevaluate my goal and whether it’s feasible.

Ohoni.6057:

Players don’t have trust in the other buyers and sellers, they have trust in the TP prices, that the listed prices are “fair,” and that misplaced trust is what gets exploited. Plenty of Ponzi schemes and other economic scams involve the customers never interacting directly with the con men.

Could you please explain how ‘fair’ is being used here, how it’s relevant, and how players trust in it? I honestly don’t understand how to apply the concept ‘fair’ to anonymous price listings on items. To me, that seems like saying ‘cabinet’ is true; the object ‘cabinet’ doesn’t have a truth value.

Ohoni.6057:

Then stop portraying your side as the populist angle, none of us speak for more than ourselves and maybe friends.

You’re the one that said “We know TPers aren’t that widespread.” How is the side that includes the overwhelming majority of the players not the “populist” position? It’s true whether they realize it themselves or not.

Yes, I said that. I’m not saying I’m the populist side, I’m saying neither of us are. You say your side has the ‘overwhelming majority of the players.’ Prove it. I don’t think you can. The last sentence doesn’t even make sense.

Ohoni.6057:

If you spent an hour or so on the TP, you couldn’t expect to make more for those efforts than an hours or so of dungeon running or other activities (and yes, I’m aware that the results of those TP efforts would take time to materialize). If there are daily caps to how much you can earn through things like dungeons, then there would also be daily caps on earning through the TP.

Would you mind explaining how to put a cap on earning that is done by the fully voluntary (on both sides) buying and selling of items?

Ohoni.6057:

People cannot be blamed for the actions of people. People react as people will, as people MUST in reaction to the systems ANet puts into place. You cannot expect the players to deliberately forgo profits that they could potentially be making just because it’s wrong. If any change is to happen, it must come from changes to how the economic systems work that would reduce the profit potential involved.

That did not address what was said. Players choose when to buy and sell at what prices. I don’t know how you intend to ‘balance’ TP profits other than by taking away that choice.

Ohoni.6057:

We’re not talking about anything that has anything to do with delayed v. instant gratification. We aren’t talking about shorter paths, and if anything, the original paths would be the shortest. We’re talking about fair alternatives, in which the overall effort is equivalent, but can be pursued along alternate lines, and a balance of rewards.

Correct, we’re talking about reasonable time v. unreasonable time. The overall effort is equivalent, but the time is more reasonable. Sarcasm aside, as I said earlier, part of it is prestige of knowing the person did that particular thing and now has this cool skin, something which Gw2 has rather lacked (dungeon skins are a joke). Even if they were to create alternate lines for, say, legendary armor, I have little faith in their ability to make it fair. They failed it with dungeon skins, and tbh, I don’t think you can find a point in pvp or wvw, point to a certain quantity of progress, and say, “That’s equivalent to beating the full raid.” I’m not totally closed to the idea, I just doubt Anet can do it well and I think it takes away from the value of the item; that’s why we have pvp-only skins for example.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ so when I know that something is not fun for me, it is not, and never will be fun for me, and forcing players to continue to engage in activities that do not bring them any joy is not good for the long term health of the game.

No one is forcing you to engage in activities, that is purely your choice. If you find the only way to acquire an item is through content you don’t like, perhaps find another item to pursue.

Ohoni.6057:

The first trait redesign was always bad. The second trait redesign was always worse. Objections to it quieted down because most people who remembered the old system got their characters to 80 and didn’t have to fool with it anymore. Really a lot of the objections people had to the elite spec rollout had to do with things they broke with the second trait overhaul, for example having to slowly unlock your elite spec would have been a lot less egregious if you could pick and choose which abilities you wanted along the way, rather than being forced to pick up junk you’d never slot while your favorites are tucked near the back.

You missed the point. The point is, someone is always complaining about every change Anet makes; it isn’t a sign of anything more than a diverse playerbase.

Ohoni.6057:

You dont understand economics at all, the reason these playstyles are so much more lucrative is because they are doing the work that most people arnt willing to do, thats how entrepreneurship works

But that doesn’t make it a good thing for the game.

You haven’t actually proven that it’s not good for the game. Doing so would substantiate your current statements, which lack any empirical substance.

Ohoni.6057:

If everyone is rich, no-one is rich

Yes.

And you want everyone to be rich.

Ohoni.6057:

But my point is assuming equal skill. If you play this class, and are highly skilled, then you can 1v2 any two players on other classes, even if they are equal, or superior to you in skill.

That was not a premise in the original comparison, but I digress. This God-class, however, is only being discussed in the context of competitive pvp, a race. There is no such thing. There is no competition between you, me, and Wanze over who can reach something first. If you do view it as a race, then you don’t seem to be as concerned with winning as with the fact that others are.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ But for those who do have the minimal level of skill and interest to do well at economic PvP, it blows all other profit methods out of the water, it “1v5s” dungeons and world bosses and map metas and anything else going on in terms of making money.

Again, only if you think it is a competition. Play as you want at your pace. If you don’t think you can reach the goals you want, either reconsider how you are playing, or the feasibility of those goals.

Ohoni.6057:

When someone says a reward isn’t ‘for you,’ I think they mean to say, ‘The content required for this reward isn’t for you.’

Yes, and often I agree with them. Where I disagree is that I believe in cases like that, the “content required for this reward” should be broadened to include more people. I don’t believe that rewards should be placed permanently out of bounds unless you do specific activities, there should be alternatives.

Let’s look at, say, high-end raid skins for clearing the whole raid. Part of the point of having those skins is for the prestige, for being able to see that a person was able to clear the whole raid. Adding other ways can sometimes undermine this, like the dungeon skins (Arah mainly, the others are pretty easy). It became easier to do the pvp reward track than actually clear the real content, and it made those skins less prestigious, although I appreciate they didn’t have much in the first place.

Ohoni.6057:

By defending the current economic model in which people can make gross amounts of money entirely off the TP rather than through game play. It’s not that your individual actions have caused significant damage in game, but the combined efforts of the “play the TP” crowd have certainly hurt the game for those that come to GW2 for an adventure game, and even worse, the efforts of ANet to maintain the economy to benefit those players.

I asked how TP traders directly hurt your experience of the game. Your answer states that they did. Back that up with some numbers or evidence.

Ohoni.6057:

True, but irrelevant. You can shape human nature, you just have to work around it. If prices are too high, then actual gameplay changes need to be made to correct that, not just players deciding to deliberately abandon the TP. If prices qare too high, then either supply needs to be increased, or the need for those items (natural demand) needs to be reduced.

And I think Anet has proved quite good at that. Just look at silk, thick leather, the various wood logs, iron and plat, etc. If they thought an item was seriously too pricey, they’ve shown themselves capable of balancing that, imo.

Ohoni.6057:

Macroeconomics doesn’t seem all that important to consider for you. But it’s the approach Anet has to take, as the ruling body of this system.

And in my view, it’s something that needs to be considered, but it can’t be the ONLY factor considered. The economy should work for the players, not the other way around. The macroeconomic issues, such as inflation, need to be taken care of, but they also need to pay attention to the players, and make sure that everyone is getting the things that they want at a reasonable rate.

‘Reasonable rate’ remains a vague, undefined, subjective, and therefore useless term. You only seem to want to talk about macroeconomics when it supports your side.

Ohoni.6057:

There are things that I want that can be bought with gold, they would make my play experiences more fun, but it’s the actual playing of the game that keeps me playing. There are also plenty of goals to aim for that have nothing to do with gold or the TP.

That’s your playstyle, and that’s fine. If you want to aim for those other goals, go ahead. But don’t invalidate everyone else’s playstyles just because you don’t like them.

Ohoni.6057:

Then, I guess we should all be thankful the rewards from dungeons were nerfed, as dungeon-runners made significantly more Gold per hour than all those that don’t have the ‘skill’ or desire to run dungeons.

Yeah, in general, so long as they spread that gold out to other activities.

Apparently you missed the sarcasm. Hint: there was sarcasm.

Ohoni.6057:

I guess the OP wants everything one does in-game to give the exact same rewards at the end of a play session, regardless of time spent or skill involved. Every player should have all the exact same things? Maybe all rewards should move to the Daily Log-in rewards?

I don’t really think that would be necessary, but yeah, ideally most in game activities would be in reasonable balance.

Straight from the horse’s mouth

Ohoni.6057:

But again, the larger point is that you’re making a facetious argument that you can’t craft ascended armor with just gold, which while true is largely irrelevant, since you can craft the ascended armor with MOSTLY gold, and with a VERY small amount of additional ingame skill and effort. ~snip~

No, the larger point is that gold isn’t everything and can’t get everything. Enough said.

Ohoni.6057:

If you have two players, one with zero bloodstone/dragonite/emp, but thousands of gold, and another with several bank tabs of those materials but zero gold, try to guess which of them could acquire enough mats to make a set of Ascended Armor first by completing normal ingame activities.

Now you’re the one making facetious arguments that gold buys pretty much anything. Hmm.

Ohoni.6057:

But the problem is that there are dozens, if not hundreds of people employing similar tactics, and it is their behavior in aggregate that cause the problems. It is the system that needs to change, not what you, personally, choose to do.

I have heard two problems from you. 1) someone else is earning/has more money, which isn’t a problem at all, and 2) other people can make money using ways I don’t like, which has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with you.

Ohoni.6057:

You are always saying that i am abusing and exploiting a system but all i do is listing my stuff at higher prices than the average player.
If they would list their loot at the same value as me, they would make the same profit, its that simple.

Which is an argument that has kept exactly zero confidence men out of prison.

Con men build trust with a victim, then use the other person’s confidence in them. This system is utterly anonymous; no trust or confidence is involved. The parallel is only in your mind. You didn’t even address what he said. anyone can do it.

Ohoni.6057:

The average player doesnt have the choice to list his loot at the same value as me?

He doesn’t have the understanding of what price to list things at and expect to ever make a return on that. ~snip~ If you have no idea that the price will rise, or even that it could fall further,then you have no reasonable expectation of positive returns, so just randomly listing items at prices well above the current level is not likely to pay off.

Yes, that’s called research, knowledge, and skill. Those three things, combined with the fact that most people don’t want to do it, are what make it profitable.

Ohoni.6057:

As I said, it’s like if there were a god-class in the game, but it required a certain level of skill to operate. Not more skill than other classes, just more skill than the average player would be able to display, and the returns for it are far and away superior to anything that any other class could possibly achieve, regardless of the skill applied to those classes.

Those were premises you did not originally state. Anyway, class balance is centered mostly around pvp, so that would really only matter if this was strong enough to become super dominant and widespread. We know TPers aren’t that widespread.

Ohoni.6057:

He understands how to abuse the ingame economy for his own benefit, that does not mean that he understands how the average player interacts with it. His problem is in not understanding human psychology, not in not understanding economic principles.

Again, stop pretending you speak for everyone. You don’t. Anyway, what is this “average player interaction” that we so utterly fail to understand, and how do you know the playerbase actually cares?

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

Quite the opposite. You guys are defending a system that serves yourselves, at the expense of the majority of the game’s players. The playstyle I’m trying to reward is the playstyle that the overwhelming majority of the players embrace, and the “playstyle” that I’m trying to curtail is one that is only enjoyed by a tiny fraction of the game’s players. Don’t try to portray your side in this as the populist angle.

Then stop portraying your side as the populist angle, none of us speak for more than ourselves and maybe friends. As it is, you haven’t demonstrated it actually damages the play experience of the average player, or that the majority of the players agree with you. Give some non-anecdotal evidence of those, and then you begin to have a case.

Ohoni.6057:

but i dont go around complaining about the players who do these things because im just as capable of doing it too, i just choose not to and i accept that i wont receive the benefits because of my own unwillingness to work at it

That’s a very defeatist attitude, but why do you believe it would be beneficial to the game? Why should players have to employ systems that most of them do not enjoy to achieve that level of returns? Why shouldn’t the most enjoyable activities also be the most rewarding? Why does it benefit anyone to have to choose between “doing the things in game that I enjoy doing” or “being able to afford the things I want to have?”

Some people do enjoy using the TP. The most enjoyable activities are the most rewarding, precisely because they are so enjoyable. This is a game that sold on the motto, “Play how you want.” You can do exactly that; don’t throttle it by shutting off other, valid playstyles.

Sorry, but I wanted to get all of this out.

It doesnt really matter, where my gold comes from, if the simple fact that i have more than you makes you feel uncomfortable or unfairly treated.

Honestly, the gold itself doesn’t bother me at all. You could have 10m gold for all I care. What bothers me is what having that gold allows you to buy (if you want them, doesn’t matter whether you do or not). There are plenty of items in the game that cost thousands of gold to procure. If I had substantially less gold than you, but I still had plenty that I could buy every item on the TP that I was interested in and still have plenty left over for a rainy day, then I wouldn’t mind in the least you having more.

So you don’t dislike the gold, you dislike that he can spend it. I see the logic…or lack thereof. Consider this: if you had the gold to buy every item on the TP that you wanted plus some, what would keep you playing? What motivation or goal would cause you to log on? Personally, I’ve found I don’t log on as much right after finishing a big goal because I haven’t set a new one to work towards.

Ohoni.6057:

I your personal perception of others that are better off than you is so important to you, I am not sure if an mmo is the right game for you and I would say that a solo rpg is what you are looking for.

And if you can play this game for 10K hours and not even care about “alts, . . .style, . . . gear, skins minis, dyes or other non-essential shenanigans,” then I’m not sure GW2 is the right game for you, you might be happier with a more pure economic simulator like EVE, one where the economy does not have actual impact on people trying to enjoy an adventure game about sword and armor.

He isn’t the one complaining about the game, you are. He is fine with the game as it is, and enjoys it enough to log 10k hours. You don’t seem to enjoy it, but rather despise some parts of it. The only suggestion here is to find another game that caters more to the parts you do like. Now, if you would mind proving that it affects you enjoying the game….

Ohoni.6057:

Why is it that i dont feel neglected by anet because other players can earn stuff with their playstyle that i cant while trading but you feel worse off just because i have alot of gold?

I don’t know, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. You’re you, I’m me, everybody’s different.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, unless it’s your feelings that are hurt. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, but Anet should still change the game to be the way I want it.
/sarcasm

Ohoni.6057:

Seems like a personal problem rather than a problem with the game.

It’s a personal problem I have with the game, yes. You say that as if that means it’s an irrelevant problem. Personal problems are not irrelevant when the game is populated by people. Personal problems ARE game problems.

Again, find another game that doesn’t involve the mechanics you have a problem with. Again, you seem to think you speak for the casual playerbase as a whole. You don’t. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of people don’t care about the TP.

Ohoni.6057:

How do I affect the game any differently compared to someone who buys his wealth in game with real currency?

Not much, although personally I’m no fan of those sorts either. If there is any distinction, it’s in how your methods prey on your fellow players, however much you try to pass that off as “them asking for it.”

Random player (A) just got a random exotic (1), for the sake of example. A could do pretty much anything they want to with 1. They choose to sell it to the highest bidder (B). As far as they are concerned, they are happy. They got to conduct the transaction they wanted, they have their money, and go on about their business. Why should A care what B does?

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ Things would not be listed for thousands of gold if nobody could or would ever pay it. If anyone tried, someone would just undercut them. The costs of goods are all relative to what people are willing and able to pay for them. I don’t particularly blame you for taking advantage of the system as it exists, you’re just doing your best with the tools available. I blame ANet for allowing the system to exist in its current form, and what animus I hold towards you is only for you publicly defending the corrupt system.

You got one thing right: costs are relative to what people are willing and able to pay. Perhaps not you, perhaps not Player #231,468, but enough people. And yet you somehow seem to blame traders for these prices, or at least for inflation beyond what you can pay. No, what people like Wanze do only causes deflation.

Continued; still gonna be long

Except that casuals have just as much need for those Ascended mats, and now have difficulty affording them. I just don’t think you have a grasp of what actual players of this game want or need from the game, You seem to view the average player as some sort of prole, just tolling away at their dirt farms so that they can scrape together enough materials that they can trade to rich players so that rich players can have nice things. That is not a healthy game community by any stretch. The healthy community is one in which everyone has nice things. Enough with this “trickle down economy” nonsense.

You seem to think you speak for the “proletariat masses,” if you will. You don’t. You speak for no one but yourself, so don’t pretend you represent the average player. We don’t know what the general opinion is; no one has done a poll that I know of. To address what was said, these mats are farmable. Spiritwood and Deld use various ores and logs that can be harvested around Tyria. Boom, new income source for casual players, and a way to get them without buying from the TP.

Ohoni.6057:

And just as if they added one God-class to the game, any player could choose it, but it wouldn’t be as fun for the players that really wanted to play a different class instead.

Woah, stop. How is Wanze or Penguin or myself or anyone directly making the game less fun for you. Go ahead, try to demonstrate it.

Ohoni.6057:

the market is similar, if you know how to work it, you can receive grossly out of balance returns for your time and effort spent, while if you lack that skill, then you won’t get anything out of it.

I’m not saying that higher skill should not result in higher returns, just that it should not result in returns so drastically higher than any other activity.

This is your opinion. You are entitled to it, but not everyone feels the same way. This doesn’t allow you to force your opinion down the throats of everyone else here.

Ohoni.6057:

You’re getting back into that “Items created from thin air are completely different than items taken from other players” argument, which is entirely pointless. That may matter on a macro-economic level, but it’s completely irrelevant on a player level. All that matters on a player level is how much items cost to you, and how much money you bring in, from any source.
The macroeconomic argument is important to consider, but it does not invalidate the player-level situations, that needs to be resolved as well.

You appear to be talking about the cost of items on the TP here. First, please go read something on supply and demand; they are extremely basic economic principles and understanding them would help a lot. If enough people find the prices too high, the demand will shrink and price will drop. To put it another way, if people don’t value an item as much as its price, they won’t buy it, so sellers will sell lower to get buyers. Macroeconomics doesn’t seem all that important to consider for you. But it’s the approach Anet has to take, as the ruling body of this system.

Ohoni.6057:

Thats a noble thought but how do you address the fact that some people put in more effort (game time) than others?

If they put in more effort then they put in more effort. So what? It’s not like the real world where putting in more effort actually brings benefit to other people, it’s a game, ~snip~

Do you seriously intend to say that people should not be rewarded more for putting in more effort? Should we move legendaries to Day 2 Login Rewards? Should a person with <100 hours in-game get the same skins and rewards as someone like me, who has put in >3k hours? How is that in any way fair or just?

Ohoni.6057:

The difference in wealth is not in time or effort spent playing the game, it’s in the relative returns of the activities you prefer over the activities I prefer. It’s you preferring the “God-class” while I prefer to play as a Guardian or Daredevil(although I quite like Reaper and Tempest at the moment).

I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.

Hello again, Ohoni. Sorry about the wall of text in advance. It’s gonna be big.

Ohoni.6057:

So let me pose this: Say there is a class in the game. Say it has a very complicated ideal skill rotation. Say that if you fumble this rotation, the class is not very good, middling at best, but if you are reasonably good at hitting the rotation, the class is overwhelmingly powerful, just absolutely obliterates any other class in 1v1, 1v2, even 1v5.

If it can seriously win a 1v5, then yes, it needs fixing just to keep the game in check. But a 1v2, at high skill levels? That’s what’s called skill cap. The more skilled you are at it, the better you do. Anet may want to hit an equilibrium of skill ceiling, but that’s rather unlikely.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~
That doesn’t even factor in the Precursor, which either requires high RNG, building and tossing a bunch of weapons into the forge (which is also high RNG and good luck doing that using only materials you farm yourself), or doing the Precursor quests, which currently also require literal tons of materials, which would take you years to farm for yourself.

Yes, “build the Legendary entirely through your own efforts” is a possible path, but it is nowhere near balanced against the TP alternatives.

I recently built Dusk, which requires ~90 deldrimor steel. At the time, I had quite a bit of gold saved up, so I used that to buy the plat/iron involved. With Dusk done, I’ve slowed down and started farming plat and iron. It’s quite farmable, and in a couple full days I’ve been able to get enough for 27+ deld (with a LOT of extra platinum to boot). For a more casual player, the same could be done over a few weeks, not years

Ohoni.6057:

In general, people are rarely or never satisfied. In MMO’s, this manifests less as jealousy of other players than as the constant “gimme more” reaction. “I got that reward, there’s nothing to do.” “I completed in a week that Xpac you took a year to design. I’m bored. We need more content”

~snip~ So the more useful response is “people can be expected to behave a certain way, how can we design a world that takes that into account?” You do that by having a more level balance between highs and lows, so that the highest goals one can achieve are achievable by most of the people within a reasonable amount of time, rather than making the highest goals something that only a few people can be reasonably expected to accomplish (yes, I’m talking to you too, the “well anyone can do it if they apply themselves” crowd).

On the contrary, that would exacerbate the problem; those people would reach those goals even faster. And are you really going to argue that people are incapable of getting a legendary even if they apply themselves? I say ‘going to’ because you haven’t actually made any arguments for it, just stated that you don’’t believe in it.

Ohoni.6057:

I believe that a reasonable amount of time to earn a reward is fine, but certain items in the game currently require unreasonable investments of time.

And how is reasonable defined? How is this definition objective, agreeable, and useful? As of now, this statement is just vapid.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ In an attempt to try to please everyone, developers often will try to vary up their offerings to provide something for everyone. This does mean, though, that players would need to accept that not everything added to the game is for them. That seems to be a big ask for some people.

I believe this is true of content. If I do not enjoy PvP, they will still likely add PvP because some will enjoy it, and that is fine. Where I disagree is when people try to apply this to rewards, because whether a reward is “for me” or not is entirely subjective to me, and entirely irrespective of where that reward drops from. If you tell me that a given armor piece is “not for me” because it only drops from PvP and I don’t want to PvP for it, then no, you are wrong on that. The armor is “for me” if I believe it is “for me,” they have just made the method of obtaining it inconvenient to me.

When someone says a reward isn’t ‘for you,’ I think they mean to say, ‘The content required for this reward isn’t for you.’ Either way, what the statement is questioning (and you don’t seem to grasp) is feasibility. A reward may not be for you because it is unfeasible for what you play. You seem to conflate liking something with that thing being for you.

It’s not that simple. In the OP, you suggest giving the x-pac out for free to all active players, perhaps as a reward for Living World type events. Do you realize how much that would cost? The amount of lost revenue would be massive. Making an x-pac, even one as small in scope as HoT, takes a lot of time and money, and dong so would remove a lot of the latter. I agree, it’s not a great system, but at least it keeps the game growing.

Additionally, Kayberz has a very good point. You paid and got the game to play for 3 years; isn’t that worth something?

D is already in place. Look at the other tabs on Hobbs or whatever it is in LA.

Crow.1683:

my Q is, will eternity be even sell-able after using the sunrise that i made using the new collection way or will i wont be able to sell due not being able to sell the collection legionaries ?

The collections make the precursor for that legendary. From that point on, you still use the old system.

Christina.7926:

@mtpelion
I didn’t realize I could get a combination of level 80 drops and lower level drops in a lower level region, so that is good at least. Overall though, the number of times I salvage thick leather, silk, or leather from these regions is still staggering, so I’d say this “combination” is still pretty low. I don’t have a problem with these lower level mats having value in crafting of ascended gear, but the problem is that the supply doesn’t match the demand in the game and so these prices are skyrocketing. I realize a ton of money is made by flipping on the TP, but preserving the ability of some to flip for a profit shouldn’t be the basis for having ridiculously low drops/ability to procure an item in game. There are plenty of other things to flip. One cured thin leather square shouldn’t cost 13s79c on the TP:
https://www.gw2tp.com/item/19733-cured-thin-leather-square

It’s not about flippers, it’s economics. If a large portion of the playerbase shared your opinion that that price was too high, then it would fall. People would still list but no one would buy. This is how supply and demand works. But if there are enough people willing to buy cured thin leather at that price, then it will remain.

“Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.”
-Publilus Syrus

Yay! An update from Anet. Looking forward to when this gets patched.

Vieux P.1238:

It’s like i said before. The overall idea of the guild halls is great. A place to assemble, hang around & show off to others. All that wile you get to use services & all. But like Torolan.5816 mentioned above. As it is now, Only a handful of ppl will ever see it. Mostly members. Woop woop. Wow, big deal! & like i said. Once the Guild hall hype is done. It’s dead! It should not have bin implemented as instances. It should of from the start bin centered in racial cities as housing developments . Not outside, not huge continent type halls. Just plain simple housing developments where players have access to all there needs & socialize with members & other guilds. .

Counterarguments have already been stated before, and I don’t think you’ve addressed the points they bring up, so here is a short list of reasons why this probably won’t work, summarized from the thread:

1. There is simply not enough space in the open world for this to be feasible. I think you underestimate the sheer number of guilds there are.
2. The devs don’t have the time to make all of the assets and buildings and materials to make this work. Even if there are enough buildings for all the guilds, it would take far too long to do even a little fleshing-out on each of them.
3. This kind of thing would create tons of toxicity in the community, fighting over who owns which buildings where. Overall, I have found Gw2 to have a nice community, and there is no reason to destroy that
4. Putting Guild Halls in the open world, if anything, exacerbates the problem of Halls being dead. People aren’t in Halls for one of two reasons: 1) they are out playing the rest of the game, experiencing content, and having a good time. 2) They don’t need the services there – if there’s no need, why go?

I don’t think you’ve actually answered any of these objections, beyond simply denying them. Go hop on the world boss train for half an hour and see how many guild tags you see. That’s just a tiny piece of it.

timer.7210:

Yep its fixed

http://i.imgur.com/5Xt6wuy.jpg?1

Thank Anet if this is true. I can’t get in-game now, but when I do, you can bet I’ll be doing this!

I am having exactly the same problem.

Same here, with DT and VB. Anet, pls fix these kinds of bugs

Bump, just had the same thing.

Yeah, I’ve got the same thing. I don’t know what Anet is doing, but this needs to be fixed.

I can not agree with this thread more. I have no words to describe just how much CORRECT this patch was. Thank you guys, it looks truly glorious

Think about it this way. When you open so many at one time, you have to take breaks and stuff. If you split it up so that you empty you bags every cpl of hours, that time spent farming IS your break, only you utilize it more.

If we’re thread necroing, lets do it full force!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If we were to go back in time, maybe the Iconics story would have been similiar. They had to be unknown ‘street-level’ nobodies once, didn’t they? Or were they just born world-renown adulated heroes? I don’t know, as I know little of their past history.

Yep. Rytlock and Logan tried to murder each other, then they found Caithe, got arrested, and started fighting in an arena to get free. Then Eir, Snaff, and Zojja beat the crap out of em in a bet with the arena owner.

Thanatos.2691:

Marjory’s sister dying was poorly done imo because her character had as much development as Antarctica. I think it would be interesting to see Braham sacrifice his life to save Taimi or Kasmeer forced to kill a corrupted Marjory.

On the latter, I agree, that would be far more interesting. On the former, you are wrong. Antarctica has up to 4.7km or so of ice. Belinda had a cash grab greatsword, and maybe 20-30 lines total. Way less development than Antarctica.

Spartacus.9743:

I think the only from the biconics that can give a sense of real cooperation, epicness and might is:
Rytlock Brimstone!!!!!!!!!!!

2 problems: 1) Rytlock is one of the Iconics, not the Biconics. 2) He’s kinda….misted….what with jumping after Sohothin and all.

Hmm….Pay 1 black mana, tap Thread Necromancer….He did it all.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I can imagine folks in the html design and QA teams reading this and going, “oops.”

LOLOL

Wanze.8410:

Because the people that rather sell directly complained about it.

I agree though that people should have a choice in the options menu maybe.
Sell to highest bid or match lowest listing by default and sell all or sell 1 by default.

Having skipped over the rest of the thread, I cannot +1 this enough. This is EXACTLY the kind of things they need to be doing. In fact, they could almost create a TP options menu of its own (like sound and hotkeys do).

Deugan.3650:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

~snipped for length~
There are some bugs with new TP that will get fixed and we’ll definitely be discussing other changes brought up. So please continue to give constructive feedback especially valuable when you explain how you would use something instead of how to fix it. (eg: I wish I knew if i’m undercutting myself, vs match my lowest needs to be a button.)

Thanks Guys and Gals

Yep, you said it yourself. Please re-add that button, the trading post became almost useless to me without it

And re-add the “sell maximum” while you’re at it .

This needs to happen. Like, ASAP.

BrunoBRS.5178:

the one thing i want back: sell max is the default option. i don’t mind that listing is default rather than direct selling, but it’s annoying that i have to, on top of selecting “sell immediately” for materials (which rarely cost significantly more to list), i have to use the slider. yes, it’s mousewheel sensitive, but it would be better if i didn’t need to use the mousewheel in the first place.

the one thing i’d love to have: being able to browse through the tabs (buy/sell/transaction history) without losing my search settings. say i’m looking for lv20 necromancer pants, then i want to go and see something on my sell tab. it would be really cool if when i went back to the buy tab, all the search filters were still there.

YES YES YES YES!!!!!!

Sorry, I got excited.

Having skipped over much of the thread, this is directed @OP.

Don’t we all agree that the costs of precursors are too high and the increase of 600g in 2/3 months is not possible to keep up with for the regular gamer.
And I DO find that also regular gamers should have a feeling of getting somewhere while they grind! I played over 2000 hours and last few months i was gathering money to buy the dawn for 600g, to see now its increased to 1200g!

First of all, please stop pretending you are all regular gamers, and the you speak for the trees -ahem- I mean, speak for the ppl. It doesn’t help. To adress your main points: while 600g over 2-3 months is hard to keep up with, this is a spike. If you look at the greater length of its gw2spidy history, it rose only 110g or so over 1 year (March 2013-March 2014). As ppl have already pointed out, this is due to the wardrobe etc. As to the 2000 hours, that comes out to 0.3g per hour. If you are unwilling to compromise on what you spend your time doing, it may be a good idea for you to reconsider what is a good and accomplishable goal for you. I, having no such problems, bought Spark for 1175g a few weeks ago, and now happily own Incinerator.

Dutchdevil.6902:

Sorry, but this is outrageous. Next to buying these things and be lucky (where I feel that still the same accounts have the luck of finding these….) The precursors shoudl be craftable..

People have begged and Anet has said this is coming for more than a year now. If they add it, they’ll take their time.

Dutchdevil.6902:

and next to this, there should be a change in the marketing system. Yes I know its inflation, can’t change it, its anonymous, players affect this market etc… But there should be done something about it. newcomers will never get a precursor and I have grinded these lat months for nothing and feel I didn’t get somewhere.. And I thought that this was just important, be patient and get stuff and see you increase in stuff you have? Well the last few months I barely could keep up with the inflation..

I’m sorry to say this, but you grinded (ground?) at the wrong time. Its not inflation per se, but a large spike in demand. Just remember, you did get somewhere. You now have 600g from that grind that you didn’t before.

Dutchdevil.6902:

and yes, I will probably hear, you don’t have to be hardcore gamer to get enough money, bu still… I wnat to play this game in relax mode and still need to feel my improvement over the game. Well this was 0 these last few months!

See above about compromising.

Dutchdevil.6902:

600g increase in money (at my slow chill pace) only to keep up with whatever the reason is for precursors to rise with 600g doesn’t feel like improvement and getting somewhere with my time put in the game! That is the baseline!

You’re comparing the entirety of what you’ve done in search of your legendary to a moving, player-controlled price. Thats where you are going wrong. Compare yourself to where you were 4 months ago.

Dutchdevil.6902:

And that is what Anet should consider. I feel like a gamer that I am standing still in those months. As the coolness for me is saving and gaining stuff in those months. But that is zero as I focussed on the precursors these last months.
So whatever the reason is, I feel like I was only keeping up and standing still the same time. That makes it for me a bad game ATM.
And apparently Anet don’t care and you are missing the point. I don’t feel like getting there! but who cares, right

They should consider what? That one player wants to get the most expensive weapons in the game for killing lvl 7 skale all day? I’m sure you aren’t doing that in particular, but it illustrates my point. Gw2 is pretty good, as that goes. Some games its every weekend, going into the same dungeon, doing the same content, hoping for the same 0.00000001% chance drop from the end boss to move up to the next dungeon, and so on…..until they add another set of dungeons for you to grind through. For others, you’re doing incredibly hard content, trying not to die, to farm challenging mobs for their rare drops. Gw2 gives you money for dungeons, gathering, killing easy mobs in the open world. Just don’t expect to make a fortune off of lvl 15 centaurs.

Sorry there, didn’t mean to rant

Yes.

/thread

Ohoni.6057:

No it isn’t. Where do you think the money a flipper earns come from? It comes from taking the risk of posting an item for sale NOT at the high bid and NOT buying items at at the current low sale price.

Which is really not that big a risk if you keep aware of market trends, which most players don’t want to bother with, and shouldn’t HAVE to bother with. That’s the fundamental disagreement here, some of you feel that the players should have to play like TP flippers iaf they want to make TP flipper profits, my point is that NOBODY should have to play like TP flippers in an action/adventure game.

Nobody has to. I don’t think there is a single player out there who has absolutely no choice: they HAVE to play the TP. Most people don’t have to bother with market trends if they don’t want to. Part of the point is that there is more reward because it is more complex, harder to understand, and has higher risk. Call missing a champ in the train a “risk” if you want. Call not getting that Teq kill off “risk.” I also noticed that the only examples you gave of missing something like a world boss were literally the 3 ONLY ones that were really designed to be hard and require large group coordination. Ever hear anyone saying that they didn’t managed to kill the Shadow Behemouth in time, or didn’t kill the Shatterer fast enough? I haven’t.

Ohoni.6057:

I said this before, flippers are just player vendors willing to sell you an item for X but buy it back for much less than X. Exactly what NPC vendors do. They never buy back an item for as much as they are willing to sell it to you for. The difference is player vendors are willing to pay the player more for an item and consequently sell it for more as well.

Which would be fine, except that flippers pocket the difference and end up with more money over time than the other players. You don’t see your average Lion’s Arch vendor rocking Sunrise.

That’s because they’re NPCs. I wonder though…have we given any of these merchants enough money to buy a Sunrise? Wouldn’t surprise me.

Ohoni.6057:

But it’s not considerably less effort. Different effort.

It’s both. It takes considerably less effort to use the market to make money than to use adventuring to make money. Sure, you could spend 24/7 working the markt like a crazy person, and you would make more than dabbling in it an hour or two per day, but dabbling an hour or two a day would make you way more money than any form of adventuring an hour or two a day, and if you do it right, more than adventuring 24/7.

One of them is pressing keys to kill monsters. One of them is clicking on buttons to buy and sell things. I fail to see how learning your combos takes more effort than learning your markets. I would also point out that a dungeon runner generally isn’t paying 80 silver for a chance at 105 silver or something like that. Adventuring you simply gain. Flipping, you have to put some of your money in to get anything back.

Ohoni.6057:

1) Just because I don’t enjoy being undercut doesn’t mean that I dislike all parts of it. 2) You aren’t balancing. You are removing a method because it doesn’t suit your playstyle. You shouldn’t be able to force your playstyle on everyone, especially in a game that sold on the line “play how you want.”

Ok, I agree with that, but can’t you understand how the current TP forces that play style on anyone who wants to earn money at a reasonable rate? If they can figure out a way so that TP players can keep playing as they have, but make no more money per day than someone who spends the same amount of time champ training as they spend on the TP, then I’d be fine with that, but I just think achieving that level of balance would be a lot trickier than just eliminating the flippers entirely.

That depends on your opinion of reasonable. If you think 700 gold per month is reasonable then of course a bunch of activities aren’t going to fit into that. Of course balancing is harder than nuking! In this case especially though, since you’re not just playing with skill coefficients and things like that, but also player demand and supply. It might also be hard to calculate average profit for champ trainers or something like that, given how much RNG and MF is involved.

Ohoni.6057:

The TP is FAR FAR FAR less of a wealth creator than any other method. It is a gold SINK, not creator.

It may be a gold sink in a macro sense, but it’s absolutely a wealth creator for some. Pretty much everyone who has actual “wealth” in the game did so via the TP.

The TP doesn’t create wealth, it destroys some in the process of moving it. Nothing is created, only destroyed. Also, please define what actual “wealth” is in Gw2.

Ohoni.6057:

Your standard argument for that is Player A sells X to B, then B sells it to C for money. You seem to think that B is then stealing money from A, and/or ripping C off. Short term flipping, this isn’t true because Player A could have listed at about the prices B did, and made that money. Player C could have placed a buy order at about the prices B did, and would have gotten the item. They didn’t.

All true, but still if A priced low then C would be getting a great deal that would make him happier and leave more money in his pocket. If A priced high and C still bought then A would have gotten a great deal and would have more money in his pocket. If B steps in the middle then B makes all that money and neither A nor B benefits from it. I want A or C to be happy, I see no benefit in B being happy.

The ENTIRE way that B makes anything is by A and C choosing speed over money, or being to dumb to know what else to do. EVERYTHING that B can make is dependent on A and C CHOOSING what to do with their goods. Also, you literally just said, “I see benefit in alienating a portion of the playerbase.”

Ohoni.6057:

Do you think someone should be able to get that same long term money for not having done the research, forethought, etc?

Yes. The trader in that case makes money by guessing what ANet is going to be doing next. ANet knows what ANet is going to be doing next. ANet should be doing a better job of making that clear to players, and of giving players time to adapt to those changes, so that there is no reason to speculate. Alternately, ANet should be doing a better job of countering speculation with supply dumps, for example if they notice a hoarding of a given mat that is related to an upcoming recipe, then at the same time they announce the recipe they could announce a massive dump of that resource, so that everyone will have plenty without having to pay increased prices for them.

That was a problem when they added Ascended armor and the prices of cloth shot way up. If they’d simultaneously dumped cloth into the world then the prices would have remained stable.

Speculators would still have reason to speculate, since I’m guessing most of their goods aren’t acquired within 2 weeks or so of the update. Part of the reason they add material sinks like ascended armor is because they DON’T want silk scraps sitting at vendor price. Silk Scraps shot up so high because Anet decided that they wanted to have tons of silk used in ascended armor, which also helped their goal of not seeing it at rock bottom.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, normal players do put up buy and sell orders. Yes, players that need it NOW NOW NOW could still find sell listings to buy, but the question here isn’t whether or not those exist, but how many of them are there and at what prices. Now, I’m no economist, but I can guess that flippers do keep buy orders rising and sell orders dropping due to competition. So the average player might pay less for buy orders (and that’s a big might), but they will probably pay more for sell orders.

Maybe, but since few players would be exclusively buyers or sellers, but rather more often do both on different items, that would balance out. They might have to spend money to get things they want, but they’ve make more money offloading what they don’t need. What distorts that relationship is people working the middle, and taking that difference for themselves.

Half of that is assuming that buy orders will drop the similarly to sell orders, and that they will magically balance out. It also assumes that adding these features will magically make A and C place sell and buy orders respectively. The other half is assuming that a flipper is stealing/taking money from A and C. That isn’t true, A and C are voluntarily giving that to them.

The ADVENTURERS do win, but only if they have a basic level of understanding and don’t just always sell at buy order and buy at sell order. By that I mean they get similar amounts of money for their items. Also, nice way to throw in a UI-to-win attempt, I don’t see what someone with 300g “wins” over someone with 50g, other than being able to buy more expensive skins. I wouldn’t call owning a 1500g weapon winning.

Fair enough, spot me a 1500g weapon then and we’ll call it even.[/quote]

The Moot, for example. There aren’t any 1500g exotics (closest is more than 1100g though – Mjolnir). Most legendaries have buy orders above 1500g.

Ohoni.6057:

I think the better solution is to use Bind on Purchase to eliminate flippers from the PvE marketplace, and then add a PvP-only marketplace on which PvP TPers can compete with each other for kitten, without impacting the PvE economy.

I’ve already made a point on this. Also, how would you distinguish flippers or whatever from everyone else?

Ohoni.6057:

Most of the time I ask people why they dont play the tp to make more gold, they say, they dont know how (not enough skill and knowledge) and they cant be bothered.

Both perfectly valid reasons, but not a justification for those who do know how, and do both to make nearly as much money as they do. It’s just an unbalanced system. It’s not unbalanced in the way that I believe you were denying earlier, that it’s an “unlevel playing field,” but it’s unbalanced against other activities. It’s balanced in the way that a good FPS game is balanced, in that the best player will win and the game won’t favor one player over another, but it’s unbalanced in that it favors those who play this one aspect of the game well over people who play the entire rest of the game well.

How does this affect you though? I don’t see how this directly affects you. “Prices are higher!” Prices are always going to be higher, because its a lot easier to get 10g now than at about launch. and, unless someone like Wanze or Vol or someone will tell me they made their money by doing otherwise, flippers compete, and therefore undercut each other.

Ohoni.6057:

IF they had marketed this game as an economics simulator in which you could also swing a sword around on the side, then sure, why not? But they marketed it as a grand adventure, so it’s their duty to manage the economy in such a way that the ADVENTURERS are the ones that win, not the stock brokers.

The ADVENTURERS do win, but only if they have a basic level of understanding and don’t just always sell at buy order and buy at sell order. By that I mean they get similar amounts of money for their items. Also, nice way to throw in a UI-to-win attempt, I don’t see what someone with 300g “wins” over someone with 50g, other than being able to buy more expensive skins. I wouldn’t call owning a 1500g weapon winning.

Ohoni.6057:

Anet doesnt reward players more gold for playing the tp, other players do.

Because of the way ANet designed the marketplace to favor them. Perhaps this was not a conscious choice on their part, but it was still a consequence of their design choices, to list buy and sell orders, but not the actual completed transaction prices. To allow players to buy items off the market, with no personal need for them, and instead then relist them at a more favorable price. They didn’t have to allow any of that, but they did, and they can still fix it.

The only broken thing here is that you feel like everyone should be forced to play how you want them to, just to fit into your earnings by your chosen activities.

By the way, the only reason I’m writing by now is because I find it fun. You dodge questions when directly asked how something would affect your suggestion, you ignore explanations far better researched and logical than any theory I could place, and still through it all manage to insist that everyone should be forced to play what you want them to how you want them to.

Ohoni.6057:

They do add, though. Convenience. They provide to those who are willing to spend more and get less for their items in exchange to get it NOW NOW NOW.

No they don’t. You don’t need a flipper for that. Normal players put up buy orders too, normal players put up sell order too. Players that needs something NOW NOW NOW could still find it even without flippers.

Yes, normal players do put up buy and sell orders. Yes, players that need it NOW NOW NOW could still find sell listings to buy, but the question here isn’t whether or not those exist, but how many of them are there and at what prices. Now, I’m no economist, but I can guess that flippers do keep buy orders rising and sell orders dropping due to competition. So the average player might pay less for buy orders (and that’s a big might), but they will probably pay more for sell orders.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

We’re talking about human beings. Skill shouldn’t make a huge difference in income. Just because anyone can do something doesn’t mean that the people doing it don’t deserve compensation for time and effort spent on it. Just because you need to know more to be able to run a stock trade than to carry boxes around doesn’t mean that the former needs to pay way more than the latter.

Yes, everyone should get monetary compensation for their work, as commonly referred to as payment. Sure, the difference shouldn’t necessarily be as big as it is. What I am saying is that those executives are move valuable to the company than the average worker. There are always people looking for jobs, and would take one at the factory. Those who have the skills and know-how to run companies and stores, those people are rarer and harder to find. So, the company pays them more. SImple supply and demand type stuff. Hope it’s not too complex for you

They wouldn’t ALL vanish immediately, but you might be surprised at how much less there would be. Get a better deal my Ogden’s Hammer. Sure, buy orders might lower somewhat, but, if the average player is as dumb as your posts suggest, the sell order would raise more if flippers stopped providing competition.

Ohoni.6057:

The thing is though, there are still savvy players, and they would still get good deals on their buys and sells, because they would be paying attention, and they would still come out marginally ahead. It would just cut down in the volume of trading, you’d have people selling a few weapons per night that they looted themselves, or buying a few weapons per night that they needed, rather than buying dozens of weapons at low prices and selling them at higher.

How does removing volume of trading help at all? You have average players buying NOW at higher costs, a MUCH smaller TP gold sink, so inflation will be rampant across almost all markets, and it would take much, much longer for items to get to equilibrium after some change (i.e. Iron Ore spiking due to the new backpieces).

Ohoni.6057:

You are still comparing loot, which is created out of thin air to profit on the TP, which is given to me by other players.

Yes, yes I am doing that, because both of them are the same ingame wealth. The only difference is that the adventurers earn the loot by fighting for it while TP tycoons just work the UI all day in town.

And having the knowledge, know-how, and time dedicated to flipping earns them nothing? Other than what they actually are, what makes those any less ‘earning’ than learning how to push a series of buttons amongst others doing the same?

Ohoni.6057:

I dont get account bound mats on the tp that are earned through gameplay, i dont get dungeon tokens, guild commendations, karma or skillpoints on the tp.

No, you don’t, but you do gain gold, and almost anything worth having can be gained using gold, and very little in the game can be bought without it. I have tens of thousands of units of things like Bloodstone Dust and Dragonite Ore, [……] I also have enough Mists to make a couple of Ascended backpacks, but not the stacks of t6 mats that I’d also need, which again cost cash.

You can get a lot of stuff with money, there’s very little that you can get with the other currencies that don’t also take money. Almost every “BoA” material in this game requires an equivalent amount of cash to make it functional.

Your point? That money is useful? that you can’t always use everything you get?

Ohoni.6057:

You’re missing half the point. I don’t, and I doubt others do either, find it fun to log on and go see “Oh, there are now 23 items listed below mine.” That competition isn’t fun. I’m not a very big, rich, or good TP flipper. I don’t have thousands of gold. I have a goal for my money, and I have a chosen method: TP. If what I get from it is, in every or even most ways useless, that defeats the point for me. Also, the Clothes Company Argument is valid here.

Then why do you care whether they fix the TP or not? If they do, you can just do something else to make your money. The idea is to balance them out so that there isn’t a “best” way to earn gold, at least not one that is way better.

1) Just because I don’t enjoy being undercut doesn’t mean that I dislike all parts of it. 2) You aren’t balancing. You are removing a method because it doesn’t suit your playstyle. You shouldn’t be able to force your playstyle on everyone, especially in a game that sold on the line “play how you want.”

Ohoni.6057:

Why are we talking about rights in a video game? You have no rights to anything in it, Anet and NCsoft reserved them.

That’s the point I was making. If ANet decides that they don’t like TP flippers being vastly more profitable than other activities, and decide to patch out that little exploit, then the flippers have no right to complain.

No, thats nothing close to what you said. You said, “They do, they just don’t have the right for that to be the most profitable way to play.” As if you get to choose what we have the right to have or not have in this game. As if you get to control how everyone plays the game, to fit how you play and what you want.

Ohoni.6057:

See: What part of TPing is fun (hint: not finding half a dozen listings below yours).

Again, if you don’t find playing the TP to be inherantly fun, then you shouldn’t complain if they make it so that other methods of the game are more financially rewarding. If they make it so that playing the TP is no more of a wealth creator than anything else, then do something else.

The TP is FAR FAR FAR less of a wealth creator than any other method. It is a gold SINK, not creator. It also helps to keep prices lower with that 15% taxation. And no, you simply cannot argue that the flipper is taking money or forcing players to buy their items or at their prices.

Your standard argument for that is Player A sells X to B, then B sells it to C for money. You seem to think that B is then stealing money from A, and/or ripping C off. Short term flipping, this isn’t true because Player A could have listed at about the prices B did, and made that money. Player C could have placed a buy order at about the prices B did, and would have gotten the item. They didn’t. This means that Players A and C are voluntarily giving up money over speed. If they don’t know how to place buy orders or sell orders, then I don’t think they deserve the money. Long term it is a matter of knowledge, forethought, research, and likelihood. Do you think someone should be able to get that same long term money for not having done the research, forethought, etc?

Ohoni.6057:

So, what is this ‘right’ way(see more below)?

The right way is one that wouldn’t cripple the TP, obviously.

You’re still deceiving yourself. You say that there is a way to implement your suggestion without ruining the TP, yet whenever you are asked about it or make a point, you cannot actually identify what it is. If you can’t give a straightforward and complete answer as to what that is and how you would implement it, your entire argument is null.

Ohoni.6057:

but if you remove what flippers offer to buyers and sellers, then its like an intersection with no stops, traffic lights, or organizers: kitteny chaos and very, very slow

Lol, what flippers “offer” to the players, how very generous of them.

Way to miss the point.

I would also like a response from the devs. Would really like to have a couple more weeks to collect these things!

Sure, I may have almost 2,000 of them, but that only covers the cost of a couple back pieces.

Rezz.8019:

Quaggans can’t jump.

Actually they can. I would expect them to be able to jump because its kinda like swimming in air, but on the number 2 skil, they actually jump up and then dispense water as a costume brawl skill.