Guild Wars 2

Quickest AND cheapest? Cooking, but it’s going to involve a bit of traveling to high-level zones to get karma food.

Quickest AND NOT cheapest? That’s a tough one because you have to consider that the quickest way period is buying everything off the TP [assuming 100% availability, which is actually a really good assumption] but that’s going to cost you.

Longest AND cheapest? Farm absolutely everything possible for it. But you want to level quickly by crafting so this isn’t viable.

Longest AND NOT cheapest? Farm aimlessly and make impulse buys off the TP as it suits your fancy [like I do at times! Makes sense, right?].

I think overall your best bet is Jeweler because you cannot level cooking for less than 2g unless you buy karma food and you are only getting that by completing hearts, one of which is in a 60+ zone if I remember correctly.

It would behoove everyone in this thread to understand that there is more than one way to get that uber-item you are looking for and that most certainly involves it not dropping on the mob you just killed.

Khisanth.2948:

Zar.6953:

Just wanted to note in addition to my previous comment (can’t seem to edit it) that I have no problem with difficulty of crafting (in fact I don’t mind it being harder/longer to get to 400) but more with the fact that the stuff you do craft doesn’t seem to be substantially better than quest rewards/drops (even when you are crafting at your players level).

What’s the point in crafting if I can just play the other aspects of game and get the same gear without trying?

(for reference purposes my max level character is 57)

Crafting was never really intended to give better anything. The game tries to provide alternatives for various things. Crafting takes some of the randomness out of getting the gear that you want. My elementalist is holding two sets of Pirate gear from random drops and that is obviously not usable.

One other cause not mentioned here is that you don’t need gear to keep up with your level. You might want to have your gear keep up with the zone but it’s still fine to be in a level 40 zone with level 25 gear. Some people are also doing all the lower level zones before the higher level zones. That means they could easily 10 or more levels of gear.

Those things are nice under normal circumstances but it does make it tough to sell anything.

So basically in this game you craft because you want to or because you want a bit of a boost to your leveling speed and NOT because you think you can make some money.

You expected it to be another way? The game hasn’t been out for very long. The open of an MMO or an expansion to one will ALWAYS have this dynamic because there is more demand for materials as people level their crafting skills initially so PROFIT on those items is just NOT going to happen unless what you craft happens to be extremely rare and usable immediately.

Here is what I think is actually the problem with crafting: the xp you can get off of crafting one level worth of a single crafting component is more than what you need to craft the matching crafting component, AND the weapons you can make with those crafting components, before the xp level gets surpassed cutting off xp gain. But you can’t salvage components. Example: I can make 150 Jute Mask Paddings without making a single Rawhide Mask Strap using the craft all button, and my crafting level will fly up above the level that lets me get xp from making any of the Rawhide Mask Straps. It also ends up above the level that lets me make Masks using Rawhide Mask Straps and still gain xp. And above the level that I would get any xp from actually using the Jute Mask Paddings to make masks. Or make any xp from making the insignias that go with any of those components. But I cant salvage the Jute Mask Paddings. So what do I do? I dump the Jute Mask Paddings in the market and try and sell them to people. But EVERYONE is doing that so no one needs em.

Should I have hit the Craft All button? No, probably not, but @ 4 in the morning when I decided to just hit up a crafting station before I went to bed after 8 hours of playing I wasn’t really in the mood to figure out at what point all the xp gain was gonna disappear. And not everyone wants to sit around mucking with excel charts to perfectly level up in the most efficient manner. I’ve already surpassed my crafting level weapon and armor level by leveling my character, so none of the stuff I make is gonna be worth anything anyway. I don’t really care WHAT I make, I just want my level up so I can get back to a level that lets crafting actually have a point again. 150 Jute Mask Paddings all made in one go using the craft all button works just as well for leveling my crafting as actually going to the effort of figuring out what all I need to make the armors the component is for.

If you look in the market, you will see that the crafting components are WAAAAY cheaper to buy than the ingredients themselves are. All you need to do is buy up the uber cheap components necessary to make one item, make the insignias to go with em, do a discovery, then hit craft all. I jumped up about 50 crafting levels in a day yesterday for either leatherworking or huntsman (I can’t remember which) doing this. If you could salvage the crafting components and get the ingredients back this wouldn’t be the case.

I think they just need to taper out the xp cutoff levels a little more, or let you salvage components, and all the problems would disappear.

1. If you don’t care what you make then it stands to reason you also should not care about the consequences of your actions, which is to have an overabundance of supply in your inventory that you cannot sell because you refused to think too much about it.

2. That’s because everyone is leveling up their crafting so the prices are going to be higher than the finished product because the finished product is constantly being replaced or isn’t necessary because people are getting gear from their personal story.

3. Salvaging components wouldn’t make all the problems disappear. It would make your problem of having to analyze what you are doing to not be wasteful go away. It’s a lot easier to hit craft all and watch items whiz by than it is to think about what you are doing; one will guarantee waste and the other will help in reducing it.

You figured out a cheaper, more efficient way to level. Good job. :o) That’s a good thing.

Spent 2 hours trying to get 5 Vials of powerful blood from snow trolls in Frostgorge sound.
Got 11 potent blood, some large bones (they’re not supposed to drop that right?) and a buch of useless magic items.

GW2 has turned into a massive grind-fest for me. No grinding my foot.

For there to be diminishing returns, there needs to be a return in the first place.

Then adjust your playing style.

I’ll simplify this for you.

Let’s make some assumptions that I cannot verify but will make my point and hopefully make farming easier for you.

Let’s assume that these 5 vials cost 20c, for simplicity’s sake.
Let’s also assume over the course of those two hours you only managed to pick up 50c worth of goods [total value].

Overall, this wasn’t in your interest because you would have to spend even more time just to make enough money to buy them off the TP since they aren’t dropping for you.

Now all you have to do to get ahead is find ONE activity in this game that makes you more than what you made [25c/hour] grinding those snow trolls and then go do it.

2 hours later you may not have one single vial of powerful blood but you will have enough money to buy them, whereas before you did not, as long as you are making 50c an hour by doing it.

So the question remains – how are you going to balance out your desire to get the drops that you want against your playstyle?

Well if grinding this way is frustrating for you, which it clearly is, then grind in another fashion that nets you ever greater revenue and go buy them on the TP.

I ran into this issue in WoW but then the term opportunity cost hit me square in the face – there are times where I want to play a certain way but I know for a fact that by doing so I will make less money than I can doing something else, but that is the price I have to pay for having fun the way I want to have fun.

But the joy is that nobody dictates how I will play this game and if I have to play the game a certain way and that isn’t fun then I simply stop playing it and move on.

I hope you find what works best for you but the easier answer is to adjust your playstyle until they can “fix” whatever problems they deem worth fixing.

Thanks Janson! I do what I can!

You forgot to calculate the 15% tax the seller is charged. The seller does not make 30 copper, they in fact make 25.5 copper or 25 copper as it rounds down. This generated less money than if the person were to post a sell order, then cancel the sell order and vender the item themselves.

This is true. They will make 25 copper. My point still stands, just change everywhere you see 30 to 25.

You CANNOT make an assumption that the piece WAS going to be sold for 50c. It’s only a potential realization. All that matters here is what actually happened, not what COULD happen.

Currently, only 2 types of items are worth salvaging for basic crafting materials. Starter level cloth and metal armor which have an item value of less than jute cloth or copper or on the market. Both types of these items currently sell for nearly double what 1 copper ore or jute cloth sells for.

Trying to salvage anything else will net in a loss of money at this point due to the amount of crafting materials on the market.

This argument is irrelevant because you are making a flawed assumption – that all people everywhere are only salvaging for the reasons that you stated. Since you cannot accurately make this assumption your conclusion is also false.

But you are completely right, if you, as you did in your post above mine, completely left out the posting fee and sales tax, it would generate more money than the current system which has a posting fee and sales tax. So no, it is not an exploit and does no harm to the economies health, it in fact is better to allow people to sell below vender price.

It doesn’t matter. Any copper is greater than 0 copper so it only requires c > 0 for my statement to be accurate… and it is for every single item generated EXCEPT those that are destroyed without ever being bartered.

Are you intentionally ignoring the fact that when an item sells an additional 10% is taken out of the economy?

I ignored it for my argument because it is extraneous. You can dive into the details all you want until you arrive at a conclusive argument but so far this has not been the case.

Your. Theory. Does. Not. Work.

Baron Alfred.2348:

Wazabi.1439:

How do you know the price increase is due to people cornering the market and not demand raising? You do know the market have 2 million participants right?

With my proposed system, you will know for sure that a price increase WILL be because of demand raising and not people cornering the market.

Normal people will have nothing to lose with the proposed system. If anyone will be hurt with the system, it’s those traders/scalpers.

On a long enough time scale this is not a concern and therefore doesn’t need to be addressed by ANet because the TP has a self-clearing mechanism called desire. Nobody can corner a market here for very long because there is very little information asymmetry – in other worlds, all knowledge is available to all people. Some might get ahead of the curve and profit before the masses join in but it won’t be long before the market takes over control.

Why did you expect to immediately realize profit when there won’t be much demand for your products at max level?

Commodities aren’t being manipulated by anyone to a substantial degree unless the manipulation is causing realized profit. It may have happened in Mystic Coins yesterday and it may have happened in some of the mystic components that dropped but NOBODY has that much capital to move the markets for long so I wouldn’t worry about it long-term.

Your suggestions are moot because it’s a bug they can be sold below vendor value and it is being fixed so there’s no longer an issue once that is implemented. Anet even responded to you directly in this thread.

For the over all health of the economy, buying an item sold below vender price off the TP then reselling it to the vender has no negative effect on the economies health.

Based upon what logic, illgot? It has a negative effect because then people can create an infinite-loop of profit without any input except time and that is against their design philosophy [and that of ALL MMOs, not just this one].

A person that buys an item for 1 copper below vender price is only getting the 1 copper the seller would have received if the seller had vendered the item themselves.

And that one copper eventually turns into several thousand if the “one copper” is actually more and widely known. I thought you said that this wouldn’t have any negative effect on the economy’s health? Over the longer-term this is going to cause players to create money out of thin air that the design team did NOT account for. Since they cannot control that variable it will have an affect on the economy that cannot be predicted and that is why this is a bug, non-intended and will be coded properly as soon as they can.

Because there is no reason for anyone to buy an item at +1 copper above vender price, we now have 120958984598 of that same item sitting on the TP waiting for their owner to get to town and cancel the order and vender it themselves.

Yes there is. “Sweet, I don’t have to travel to the vendor in town A where it would cost me x+3s to transport. I’m actually saving money!”

Asides you make a flawed assumption this is the only reason people list for 1c over vendor.

If those numbers confused people… there is no additional money being generated when people sell and buy below vender price. On the contrary, we get people to buy and sell below vender price, we take an additional 10% out of the economy as a money sink.

Wrong.

Person A gets Item Z. It vendors for 50c.
Person A puts Item Z on the TP for 30c because they want to clear their bag space for the 1g Rare waiting in the unclaimed loot window.
Person B wants Item Z. They go to the TP and see it for 30c. They purchase it, unknowingly saving themselves 21c [because it SHOULD be going for 51c but it is bugged].
Person C finds out that since people are selling item Z for 30c and he can vendor it for 50c he can make a pretty sweet deal.

What’s the problem here?
Initially Item Z created a potential 50c in the economy out of nowhere assuming it was vendored. We cannot assume every single item made will be vendored so it is not a guaranteed 50c going into the economy. Someone might destroy it or salvage it so the only fact we have is potential revenue.
However, someone else is making a realized 20c by buying the items at a discounted rate and in the process destroying them by vendoring them.

That 20c is real and will eventually have a real effect on the economy if it is left unchecked. That problem is called hyper-inflation because money is being created literally out of nowhere but there is NO CHECK against it running away. How quickly that Item Z is being “produced” by the algorithms designed to create it is the only check at that point and if that item is created in mass quantities then it can easily be exploited.

This will devalue all gold in circulation but we won’t see it by knowing how much gold is being circulated. We’ll see it in higher prices, prices that ANet is attempting to keep under control based upon their design philosophy.

So you are wrong. It isn’t a money sink at all if this bug isn’t squashed. It’s an exploit waiting to happen [and it probably already is] because it has the potential to cause hyper-inflation in the economy.

The easiest example being Mystic Coin. Someone posted a thread in reddit about mystic forge recipes and incited people to try the recipes. Coins prices jumped twenty-fold in under 8 hours from 53c to more than 11s in its peak.

It’s convenient the only reason you see for this is to get people to buy up the coins is to profit off of their ignorance. It’s entirely possible that person simply shared in their excitement of being able to do something different in the game. I agree with your data, however.

The most recent example is Stick of Butter and other t1 ingredients as discussed here .

Haha, that was done by the development team, not by greedy scalpers looking for profit. Oh, and by humans creating demand by something new/exciting.

Those practices only benefit the most hardcore (with 0day information) or wealthy (enough money to buy all the things) players and only leave the rest of the populace with a ridiculously inflated price.

Wrong. The now ridiculously inflated price becomes a price whereby the lower-level players can get more gold to level their way up. This is ultimately going to cause inflation so it has to be counter-balanced by destroying even more currency, thus the “lottery system” with the jewels you could sell to the vendors.

How would that benefit me? Items would not be lower in price. The real market or demand would dictate the price, not some scalpers/hoarders with enough capital to sway the price.

You have yet to create an argument whereby the scalpers/hoarders with enough capital have actually swayed any prices. Therefore this continues to remain a baseless assertion that isn’t being taken seriously. Opinions do not equal facts.

This makes you look like one of those scalpers. The game already have too much gold sinks and the design team already brutally altered the economy around cooking ingredients.

Your opinion of me doesn’t sway my actions. I absolutely benefitted from this. People that were lucky enough to hoard butter? They made even more gold than I did.

To me it seems incredibly clear they are trying to squeeze the value of gold into thinner margins by increasing the revenue stream of lower-level players while simultaneously creating opportunities for currency destruction vis-a-vis “richer players” chasing pots of gold at the end of a rainbow [at least for a short while].

Shinzan.2908:

The sale fee isn’t mentioned anywhere, only the listing fee. So the majority probably doesn’t realize this and the game doesn’t tell them, it needs to be made less obscure.

I agree some fixes are in order.

Have you mentioned them on the official forums where a dev can take a look?

I came in here to help but Adine.2184 and starii.3865 had excellent responses already! Way to go everyone. :o)

As the MMO progresses the earlier level materials will end up increasing in value because their supply will decrease even further than it is now.

I’m curious what you expected to happen with gear that is being used to level up tradeskills? Was YOUR purpose to level your way up to 400 and sell all of your gear for profit while everyone else was doing the exact same thing? If so then you know now why that was an erroneous assumption because it cannot happen when someone else is willing to undercut you to simply recoup costs versus making a profit. Some will even sell at a loss, undercutting you even further, because they are less patient than you are.

at the same time, some common and practically all fine materials are – in comparison to full items – nonexistent; for some reason it’s logical (?) that you have to kill 10 harpies to get 1 claw (if you’re lucky), even that each of those poor beings have at least 4 per one leg. Not mentioning other things such as like 20-30% dead mobs not even being lootable; or champions having 1 white item, or veterans being worthless to bother with). Sorry that’s korean mmo “logic”. Not common sense or “GW2 is different”.

Um. What logic would you prefer exactly? The one that only increases all the drops you specifically want? Why is your system better?

Rueburbon.9641:

In regards to the cost of crafting materials… My biggest complaint is the amount of items needed appears to require farming to maintain your crafting level with your character level. Unless you pick one trade that doesn’t require those items (Artifice and Cooking I believe, haven’t done them yet I’m not positive). I have Huntsman and Leatherworking on my Ranger. After the initial whoopsie in thinking it was a grind to level, I normalized my inventory and started discovering items. I can level one with the normal progression of the game, however trying to do two makes me go to another lower level area to farm.

So my biggest issue there is the difference in levels and the increase in requirements. An example being Pillaging Wool Enhancement, requires 3 fine crafting materials, while the Embroidered Wool enhancements require 8 but no other real increase in matts. Doesn’t seem like a logical increase for these items. You end up spending more than twice the amount to for a marginal increase. It would seem to me it would be better to have a smaller increase in Fine Crafting material and a larger increase in the wool/Jute/Cotton/whatever. The increase just feels like a forced penalty for increasing your crafting.

It is never easy to level your crafting along with your character because you are not recouping any of the costs associated with learning the profession. You will therefore always encure a larger cost to do it concurrently with leveling.

You may enjoy playing this way and I encourage you to continue doing so since that is fun. What won’t happen is making it easier for people to level their crafting alongside their character level.

Makku.8203:

There was a dev post stating that they would like to do the same system with discovery, but they wanted to get the initial system out and work on the discovery side so that it works effectively.

So I presume that means it’s coming at some point!

M

In other words, your fix is coming. Be patient.

/thread

JaggedOne.6934:

When I search for an item in the AH, I see many items that are listed for sale at the sell-to-vendor price, or within a few copper of that price. This strikes as downright dumb, since the AH subtracts their 15% fee from your sale before sending you the proceeds. This would mean that you would get less from selling an item on the AH than if you sold it to an NPC vendor. Am I missing something here, or are there just a lot of ignorant peeps out there ?

Yes, you are and you happen to be one of them.

I agree it strikes you as dumb but that means you simply do not understand why they are doing it.

One need only imagine one scenario where it’s more beneficial to sell something at 85% of its total value versus 0% to understand why it isn’t “dumb” to do so. That scenario has already been mentioned here twice.

Archetype.3582:

Thanks for the response and good information!

Hey, you’re welcome! Doing my small part to have a well-informed and happier community.

What they did, they did on purpose. So let’s try and understand it from that perspective.

They hand-picked and then hand-coded certain items to be higher in value. Soft Wood Logs went from a 2 million backlog @ 2c to 9c in less than 12 hours! Once I caught on I watched the supply of >2 million go to ~500,000 in less than an HOUR.

Why would they do that?

Possibilities include:
1. Increasing demand of said goods [which they did].
2. Decreasing supply of those goods [which they did].
3. Generating more revenue for lower level players [which they have now done because they…];
4. Increased the price of those goods.

So now lower level players have less of a barrier entering the market because they can sell their wood for 9c a hit instead of 2c. Everyone gets richer. It’s quite the opposite of trickle-down.

Yes, some people benefited from this. That’s life and in an OPEN MARKET you will always have speculation and you will always have people making more money than others. Personally I say live and let live and be done with it. They coded the gems to give out riches but I can guarantee you that the drop rate for the 2g jewel was so rare that overall the higher-level players who could afford to speculate but were chasing the lottery probably lost out. I would have coded it that way but why?

To reduce money supply at the top-end of the curve.

Curious isn’t it?

Instead of widening the gap from bottom-to-top they were trying to shrink it.

Thoughts?

Baron Alfred.2348:

Many commodities are being manipulated by people with plentiful of gold for the sole purpose of scalping. Players that legitimately need to use the items are forced to buy it at a very jacked up prices.

I’m proposing that some items (trophies and consumables; mystic coins, globs, cooking ingredients) are changed to be account bound upon retrieval from the trading post. This will stop people from scalping/hoarding items.

Which commodities?

I would like an example of where people have manipulated the price of a commodity such that they managed to create a wider than 15% spread between the highest purchase order and the lowest sell order.

If you cannot provide said data then I cannot see any reason why your concern is valid in terms of scalping.

Beyond that, people are always going to hoard items so your suggestion to change that is going to fail. I only see it benefiting you because you want those items to be lower in price.

My suggestion is find a way to cut your costs or make more gold versus trying to have the design team alter the economy for you.

Archetype.3582:

Hi,

1. – I am wondering if there is a way to adjust an auction price. I put an item up last night, paid the 5% fee, but I have been undercut severely this morning. Now I would like to re-list the item, but I do not want to pay the 5% fee again.

2. – Is there any way to edit an auction that is already up?

3. – Should there be if there is not?

1. No. Sorry.

2. No. Sorry.

3. No. If you remove the risk associated with posting auctions then you will cause mad fluctuations in the economy. Take the 5% fee as a loss and now that you know better you will make a more determined approach in assuring that you post at the prices that make the most sense to you.

This makes for a more, but not perfectly, rational market and longer-term stabilizes prices. You do not want the disequilibria that comes with having rewards with no risk associated with them. If you want an example of that read up on United States economics for the past 30 years and our current state of them. “Irrational exuberance” is a good place to start.

illgot.1056:

This makes absolutely no sense. Think about it.

Player sells an item for 1 copper below vender price. That player now sold an item worth 100 copper for 99 copper. The seller lost 1 copper off vender price and 15% of that items posted value (5% posting fee and 10% tax). The player lost 16 copper selling his 100 copper item at 99 copper.

The player that buys the item only made 1 copper by junking it at the vender. Do you see what happened. No additional money was generated by one player buying an item sold cheaper than the vender price and selling it to a vender. Instead, what happened is the buyer created an additional 10% money sink for the seller by purchasing the item.

Had the item never sold, the seller would have taken it off the TP with only a 5% loss in value and full vender price back to the seller.

ANet is not actually doing anything positive for the players, the economy, or themselves by blocking people who want to sell below vender price.

Right now all we have are 1035899283475 of one type of item sitting at +1 copper above the vender price. No one is buying these items and instead the sellers are canceling the sale once they get into town and vendering the item themselves.

If ANet allows players to sell items below the vender price, not only are they creating an additional 10% money sink for the economy, they are getting rid of a lot of random crap no one would purchase.

Actually they are. Look at it from a different perspective – the back-end.

The database for the Trade Post is gargantuan and has to take into account every single thing that is put on it. There are a lot of people that are using it to dump their items instead of vendoring them. From a database perspective I am NOT going to have the TP and the vendors in the same table because this will save from having performance hits against those tables, which causes delays to the end-user [players]. We want to avoid this and because of this concern for the customer/end-user/gamer/player ANet is ABSOLUTELY doing something positive for their players.

So we give people incentive to vendor their items. Why? Because then all you have to do is store the item in memory in a buyback table that is significantly smaller and then clear it as soon as the person exits the game. Less overhead and it keeps people from unnecessarily using the TP as a trash-bin. If they are willing to lose 5% to “store” items on the TP until they get back to town then so be it – that can’t be helped but it gold-sinks as you were wishing.

The other aspect of this that bears repeating is that ultimately they do not want people to be able to sell something for less than what a vendor will purchase it for because it causes disruptions in their market control. Once a person can buy it on the TP for less than what the vendor buys it for then the mad rush is on to benefit from this.

The recent post by John Smith on the economy (click here if you are interested) makes it clear that anyone who can gain something from nothing is exploiting. If you can sit at the TP and buy something that isn’t intended to be bought and immediately flip it for gold then that goes against the design philosophy of ANet and it will get fixed immediately.

There are plenty of other gold-sinks in the game for your focus about losing a gold-sink to be a non-issue.