Guild Wars 2

Just need to buy 4 shards!

Ashelotte.7195:

Personally, I don’t understand why humans would have the majority or why players would want to pick a human to play. I suppose you could make it look like yourself and kinda of project yourself into the fantasy world of the game. How I see it though is I’m a human, I deal with humans all day, I don’t want to be a human in a fantasy game and I always avoid humans in MMOs unless there is no other option.

My view is less about projection and more along the lines of the player as an author.

If I played myself in a game, I would get banned for being way too OP.

I have at least one of each profession and one of each race.

Yet I like the humans the best and the Charr the least.

Since I am not a Charr, I don’t really feel connected to their motivation or their idiom and what I have learned of it, I don’t really agree with.

Plus, they smell bad and look ugly.

There are several things at work:

1. The market is cyclical – so the price of various materials rises and falls over time. It’s possible people bought mats when they were low, and are selling finished items now.

2. Some items on the TP are loot drops. Some are from the Mystic Forge

3. Sometimes people sell at a loss for various reasons.

4. You can craft for profit but it requires a lot of care and attention to the market.

If you were quick, you were able to take advantage of a brief dip in prices for most lodestones.

I was able to get the rest of the Destroyer Lodestones I need and get a jump on the Moltens.

Still, it looks like even with the karma method, these will remain rare and pricey.

Ed Guardian.4825:

people are saying to buy the rare pieces of armor… I just checked vendors and these are level 35 for AC… I thought ectos only dropped from equipment that was Level 70+ or when you mentioned the 30 token were you talking about the higher level dungeons and excluding the lower 6?

There are two tabs on a lot of the vendors.

Also, you don’t have a 90% chance of getting ecto on a salvage. Rather, the ecto yield from rares salvaged with master salvage kits is about 90-92% but in very large sample sizes.

I think the chance to get zero ecto is around 20-30%, but since you also have a chance to get 2 or 3 ecto, over a very large sample, it averages about 900 ecto per 1000 salvages.

Ruruuiye.8912:

No, the TP is not and should not be a legitimate “minigame”. TP competition is an emergent factor from having an in-game economy. This is something that can be controlled and needs to be going forward to keep the game accessible to new or inexperienced players and ensure that progression in equipment is reasonable and in line with the needs of most players.

You can say all you want that you can run dungeons in blue gear but it’s an unrealistic expectation. Expert players will always be able to trivialize them but those who are less into it need every advantage they can get. Groups will kick players for not having full exotics. You cannot say that blues and greens are valid dungeon gear for most players. And yes, you can say learn2play all you like. You can even justify it by saying that it is generally the highly skilled, superheavy players that pay most of the money to keep the game running, but it’s a poor attitude for the game to take in the long run.

Yes, prices do inflate over time as more money enters the economy. The problem is when the rate of inflation is too high. That is not the same as market manipulation and is just as bad no matter which causes the other. Moreover, you’re forgetting that there is no cost to maintaining goods on the TP and no limit to the number of items that can be kept there. If at any time players are unwilling to pay high prices (whether or not these are caused by manipulation), it is the seller that benefits from waiting.

The problem with all of these arguments is that they are stated as an absolute when they are, in fact, nothing more than an opinion or a preference.

If you were to say “I do not like the way that the TP has become a minigame” or “in my opinion, the emergence of the TP as a minigame is something I am unhappy with” then you would have a point.

Instead, you are saying that this sort of activity is “illegitimate” when this is simply not the case – at all. It may be unpleasant, hostile, uncooperative, inconvenient, troublesome, enviable, or many other things, but to call it illegitimate is, in my opinion, an attack on other players who have done absolutely nothing wrong except to not live up to your personal code of behavior.

Nothing new or novel is happening with regard to the Trading Post. All of the things that people complain about have happened in other games (and to a greater degree) and it would be unreasonable to think that Anet did not conceive of this or build the system in such a way as to accommodate and facilitate the current meta.

So while I appreciate that the activities of other players may be frustrating you or disappointing you, these activities are well within the scope of the game and as such, I think the problem may be that you have expectations that are not well aligned with the current economic meta. We all do this to an extent, but trying to indict others for something that is perfectly legitimate – well, it can hurt peoples feelings.

This is what happened.

Much of the ecto supply has been from people crafting rares and salvaging for ecto.

Since the recent bot ban, the price of the materials needed to craft these rares has risen to the point where you cannot make a profit doing this – it costs more to make the rare than you will likely get back from the ecto after TP fees.

The only way to supply ecto at a profit in the current market is to farm the materials (slow), salvage loot (low volume) or convert dungeon tokens into rares and then ecto (low volume).

Many crafters saw this coming a few weeks ago and a lot of people not only stopped crafting but began holding their ecto to wait and see where prices would go.

Anet said the banned snowflake people made 250,000 ecto which seems like a lot, but I think that was all absorbed within a week or two. An individual crafter can make hundreds or thousands of ecto each day – I personally made about 30,000 in December and dozens of more people were doing the same thing.

Agony resistance aside, ascended gear has more stat points than exotic.

Many people enjoy the game using yellow, green or even blue gear – there is no reason why you should not be able to play without using the pink stuff.

You are only holding yourself (and your party) back. It will not affect Anet or most other players.

There is no change. What you are experiencing happens to everyone who crafts rares to salvage for ecto. In large batches, it usually evens out, but small batches can be all over the place and if you don’t have the money to keep at it, a couple bad runs will really hurt you.

I would like to know – do you think there should be no items that require heavy grind/money? Or are you just bent because the one you happen to like requires it?

Nobody is going to grind for something that does not look exceptional and the skins that used Charged Lodestones tend to be some of the best looking items.

It’s almost like it was… by design.

cargan.5689:

Syeria.4812:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Anet has said they did not change the yield and if they did, they would announce it. They also confirmed that salvage is not affected by DR or Magic Find.

I fully believe Anet when they say they haven’t adjusted anything, but judging from behaviors of supposedly random events in the game, I have reason to suspect that their methods of generating random numbers aren’t working in a very random fashion.

Reloaded GW2 yesterday after a rebuild and yes not all of the download was gw but 16g total. Now considering the amount of code that is if Anet says nothing has been changed its safe to say nothing was intentionally changed.

It doesnt preclude that variable 103963b in line 9345772 of the code wasnt changed instead of variable 103963c when they adjusted the number of feather on the chickens in queensdale

That said the peak appears to have bee 38s slight increase in number of ectos and slight drop in price now

So your answer to why someone is seeing poor ecto yields in small samples is to wonder if the game code may have been inadvertently tampered with or altered – in such a way that nobody notices except those who salvage ecto (in small samples)?

There is a very simple reason why the ecto supply is so low right now. I personally used to manufacture between 500 and 2000 ecto per day. Many other people did this as well. However, the price of T5 material (blood/bone/claw/fang/totem/sac) is too high for this to be profitable so it’s not being done – except by people who are bad at math or by those who farm their own mats.

I suspect that the uptick in supply is from people who have large reserves selling off some of their stock.

The other, sources of ecto are dungeon runners converting their tokens into rares and people who just salvage their drops.

That’s it. Ecto does not drop as loot.

Let me address one other issue. Just because people salvaging thousands upon thousands of rares have noted a roughly 91% yield does not mean that you only have a 9% chance of not getting ecto.

You have a fairly significant chance of salvaging a rare and not getting an ecto – I’ve had runs of 10+ salvages without ecto. However, when you do get an ecto, you have a chance of getting between 1 and 3 (from rares). This means that if you have a 20-30% chance of getting zero, the chance of getting 2 or 3 will, over the long run, tend to give you an average of 91%.

To simplify and illustrate this, image that you have a 90% chance to get zero ecto and a 10% chance to get 9 ecto. The mean number of ecto per salvage would be 90%, but the median and mode would both be zero. In very large samples, you would expect to see a 90% yield, but in small batches, you would be much more likley to see zero.

Of course the current system is not as extreme as that, but don’t imagine that you have a 90% chance to get ecto every time you salvage something.

I think some of you are making unwarranted assumptions about the value of certain weapon skins.

Legendary weapons require a lot of things to make and it has been said that they will always remain best in slot.

The expensive to craft exotics like Mjolnir may cost as much as or more than a legendary, but they don’t require karma, clovers, map completion, etc. Also, if and when they do up the level cap, I’m sure you will be able to transmute skins on to higher level stats.

My point is that it’s not a purely vertical hierarchy and the value of anything is not just about it’s stats or capability – it’s about perception.

(I’m still considering selling my Juggernaut to make Mjolnir)

plasmacutter.2709:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Treplos.5182:

Articluna.4509:

To point out someones err; Master is 25% for rarers.

Yeah you are right, sorry about the confusion.

So, what some are saying here is that “Crude SK” and “Master/Mystic SK” have the same chance of getting Ori/Goss, as those are not considered “rarer mats”? And that only Ectos are actually the “rarer mats” listed on the SKs?

Can we get any sort of clarification or confirmation from ANET please?

Clarification and confirmation from ANet is not really needed. There have been extensive tests done that demonstrated the lack of correlation between salvage kits and ecto rates to a very precise degree. There is absolutely no benefit to using a high level salvage kit to get an ecto unless you want a higher chance at gossamer/oric as well.

Intriguing. Care to link the subreddit?

I’ve salvaged well over 30,000 rare light armor pieces. I have never once received anything other than silk scraps and ecto.

It’s called the gift of Fortune.

It’s actually a test of your mental fortitude and your ability to withstand uncertainty.

My last 7 clovers took 48 shards (and everything else).

After a few weeks of hug therapy, I was fine.

Just kidding – winners make their own luck.

Mystic.5934:

yes, fine T5’s have gone up. I guess I just don’t consider fines the default when talking about materials unless specified. I thought those went up because the fine T6 mats went up.
I think that in general, bots bring non-gold into the game and hoard gold they can sell them for. so less bots = inflation on everything. some things were going to drop in price anyways, so they stay the same after a wave of bot banning.

It takes (15) T5 Fine materials to make an inscription or insignia – these represent the bulk of the cost of making rare items. Light armor requires between 6s and 6.5s in thread/leather/silk and those prices do not move very much.

The price of Ecto will always track T5 fine material and a large chunk of the ecto on the TP is created by crafters/salvagers. Supply is low right now because it’s just not likely to be profitable under current market conditions.

The main way to make content difficult in this game is to either make it a long/expensive grind or to inflate the number of mobs and their health/damage. I suppose a third way would be to make something like the clock tower jumping puzzle.

The problem with those methods is that once people see what it involves, they create a build that allows almost anyone to do it.

I think that if they truly made a quest “hard”, most people would hate it.

You would need to have an element of uncertainty – a few rosters of different mobs that could appear at each point that are designed to offer a diverse enough challenge that no single build will overcome it and failing certain objectives ejects you from the dungeon/mission.

If you’ve ever done an Underworld clear in GW1, then you have a sense of what I mean – although there was not much randomness, if you let a key NPC die, everyone was kicked. Also, it cost gold to enter and most groups used expensive consumables.

I’d like to see something more like that – something where there is a cost to enter and an actual failure condition.

Can you imagine the ocean of tears?

Syeria.4812:

My sample sizes are tiny, but looking at the month of January, my ecto salvage rate (which a friend and I have been tracking) looks like this:

1/1-1/12
Black Lion Kit – 1.35 ecto/rare
Masters Kit – 0.95 ecto/rare

1/13-1/25
Black Lion Kit – 1.05 ecto/rare
Masters Kit – 0.74 ecto/rare

Both salvage rates dropped by approximately 22% from the first half of the month to the last half of the month. As for the sample size, as I mentioned it’s just not good enough to draw solid conclusions from. It’s about 50 per set for Black Lion and 100 per set for Master’s. Does anyone else have salvage rate data which they can share over the same two time periods?

As you said, your sample sizes are tiny.

I stopped making ecto a few week ago but my last 5,000 salvages with master kits showed a 91.4% yield. My runs of 125 salvages varied from a low of 68 to a high of 146 but over 5,000 salvages, it was 91.4%

Anet has said they did not change the yield and if they did, they would announce it. They also confirmed that salvage is not affected by DR or Magic Find.

Mystic.5934:

T5 crafting mats have not increased much in price.
my guess is that it did a sudden increase after recent bot banning and now people are buying them up in case the price goes higher, which of course will make the price go higher :P
starting to wish I didn’t sell my 120 ecto at 36s. but not the worst market choice I’ve ever made :P (I’d say candy corn was)
it’s kinda funny how many things are influenced by ectos.

I’m sorry, but this is simply incorrect.

In December, prices were as low as 59c and averaged around 65-75c. Most T5 mats are now in the 200c range.

Based on the current T5 mat prices, ecto is actually under priced somewhat.

I skipped it for about 2 weeks during the Wintersday event – if I hadn’t, I’d have my Juggernaut finished already.

I’m hoping the February monthly can be completed quickly – I still need about 250k karma.

I just got 100% a few days ago on my Guardian so I could make a Legendary. I was level 80 for a long time and fully equipped but only had about 33% completion.

Personally, I saw it as more of a chore than fun.

You can pretty much steamroll all the mid and low level content if you do it this way.

I got a few BL keys and the level 80 zones gave decent exotics, but the lower level zones gave low level items of little value.

I had saved the cities for last and they each gave me just a few transmutation stones (regular, not fine).

There are a lot of reasons to do it, but the completion awards are not among them.

The Blue Ace.2850:

Dreamslayer.7659:

The Blue Ace.2850:

Astraea.6075:

vido.2706:

I am positive a lot of power-traders will not agree with this matter since they are the “smart” ones that control the market and buy stacks and dictate prices on a regular basis (also the high demand vs availability increases the price so much to a unfordable level for casual and also for players that stay up to 4 hours a day playing this game.)

I don’t think there’d be many “power traders” in the lodestone market, as there really doesn’t seem to be a clear margin for them to make profit from. There may be some cyclical movement (daily, weekly) that some traders may be taking advantage of, but given the amount of capital this would tie up, I suspect that most would steer clear of this as well.

On the few occasions I’ve bought lodestones (for crafting purposes, not for trading) I’ve found that if I make sure to keep my buy offer on the top, I get the lodestones I want after a small wait (around 5 mins to buy half a dozen usually). This is slow compared to a lot of other crafting materials I buy, but I understand that lodestones aren’t as common.

It seems to me that people forget that there are two sides to the Trading Post, both sellers and buyers. Prices are determined by a combination of what sellers are willing to sell for and what buyers are prepared to pay. In the case of lodestones, the difficulty in obtaining them through normal play or farming, means that a lot of people are prepared to pay more them.

Which is why we need more places to get them from.

This is an understandable position when you want something that is incredibly rare. It carries the assumption that the rare item is rare by accident or oversight.

I don’t think this is the case at all. These lodestones are rare by design.

It may be frustrating for those who want to make something that requires them, because it may seem that without significant wealth or time, the goal is not attainable.

The corollary to this is that Anet needs to have some items and materials that are exceedingly difficult to obtain – even if just through rarity. It gives the hard core players and the hard core traders something to go after.

If you make every lodestone or rare item obtainable in a measured, consistent way, then you break a lot of the aspirational appeal of the game and chase off a significant number of players.

I know they’re meant to be rare, but cmon these charged lodestones are far more expensive than they should be!

100 charged lodestones = 430 gold.

430 is nearly as much as a precursor

A.net are fixing precursors because they are unreasonable.

Thus lodestones should be fixed too.

You talk about any fixes scaring off players, at the moment I’m considering not playing the game at all based on how broken the reward system in this game currently is!

It’s not broken – Mjolnir is one of the most rare and expensive skins in the game – it’s not a legendary but it’s clear that it is intended to be very very rare.

To just assume that nothing should cost more than a legendary is missing the point – Mjolnir does not require map completion or badges of honor or karma – it just requires time/money.

Your complaint is with the drop rate – there are plenty of these lodestones available – others players have found them and decided to trade them for gold.

The essence of your complaint is that Anet made the weapon so awesome, so desirable that too many people want it and many of the people who want it are willing to pay more for the ingredients than you are.

The core problem here is the perception of value. If other players are willing to pay up to 4 gold per stone, then that is what the stone is worth.

Just out of curiosity, I would like to hear you explain what you think it should cost, and why.

The Blue Ace.2850:

Astraea.6075:

vido.2706:

I am positive a lot of power-traders will not agree with this matter since they are the “smart” ones that control the market and buy stacks and dictate prices on a regular basis (also the high demand vs availability increases the price so much to a unfordable level for casual and also for players that stay up to 4 hours a day playing this game.)

I don’t think there’d be many “power traders” in the lodestone market, as there really doesn’t seem to be a clear margin for them to make profit from. There may be some cyclical movement (daily, weekly) that some traders may be taking advantage of, but given the amount of capital this would tie up, I suspect that most would steer clear of this as well.

On the few occasions I’ve bought lodestones (for crafting purposes, not for trading) I’ve found that if I make sure to keep my buy offer on the top, I get the lodestones I want after a small wait (around 5 mins to buy half a dozen usually). This is slow compared to a lot of other crafting materials I buy, but I understand that lodestones aren’t as common.

It seems to me that people forget that there are two sides to the Trading Post, both sellers and buyers. Prices are determined by a combination of what sellers are willing to sell for and what buyers are prepared to pay. In the case of lodestones, the difficulty in obtaining them through normal play or farming, means that a lot of people are prepared to pay more them.

Which is why we need more places to get them from.

This is an understandable position when you want something that is incredibly rare. It carries the assumption that the rare item is rare by accident or oversight.

I don’t think this is the case at all. These lodestones are rare by design.

It may be frustrating for those who want to make something that requires them, because it may seem that without significant wealth or time, the goal is not attainable.

The corollary to this is that Anet needs to have some items and materials that are exceedingly difficult to obtain – even if just through rarity. It gives the hard core players and the hard core traders something to go after.

If you make every lodestone or rare item obtainable in a measured, consistent way, then you break a lot of the aspirational appeal of the game and chase off a significant number of players.

It’s a nice note, but I don’t think that having rare, hard to acquire items means that Anet has somehow broken their promise.

Somethings are supposed to be difficult and hard and take a very long time.

The event where you clear the Tar Elementals from the camp is stuck on Crystal Desert.

I was running the Plinx event and now Plinx is stuck as well – he’s just sitting there doing nothing.

There really should be a way to reset events when they get stuck – if nothing else, then a weekly reset or something (maybe with a 90 minute warning).

I see two paths.

The first path is the path you enjoy. You’re comfortable here, but the rewards are relatively modest because simply doing what you enjoy is an inherent reward.

The second path leads to a specific result but you don’t like where it is, or what you have to do to get there.

The core human experience is the tension between doing what you want to do vs. getting what you want to get. It is only the most rare circumstance where these things coincide.

I didn’t spend my Wintersday playing bells or jumping through puzzles or sparing with wanton toys aboard an airship but lots and lots of people did. They have their reward.

I spent my Wintersday slaving away in the hot, humid lower level of Rata Sum crafting and salvaging to the limit of my physical endurance. I have Juggernaut.

Well, I still need 180 shards, but then – then I’ll have Juggernaut – and no regrets.

Mike Flavaz.2635:

Couldn’t agree more with OP. Personally, I followed this game for years and was really looking forward to playing it and was severely disapointed with the performance. So much so that I stopped played. My machine is high end. However it’s an amd processor, and even though I have the very best of AMD processors, 32gb ram, a Nvidia GTX690, Asus Crosshair V Motherboard, Solid State Drives and a great psu with enough power to revive a heart attack patient, it’s still not enough to run this game on decent fps, sometimes even in lowly populated areas. Camera pans cause severe lag even.

I usually get 18-45fps. I’m a gaming snob, which is the reason I built my gaming rig. So, playing a game that touches below 20fps on a somewhat often occurrence is simply unplayable for me. This is just unacceptable and until I hear more about some recognition of this problem and a plan to fix it, I have moved on and cannot recommend this game to anyone without the best of Intel processors. Sad…and Bad..

I’m sorry to hear you are not happy with your performance.

You have a mid to upper mid-range CPU and a top end GPU. It does seem that beyond a decent mid range card, the GPU does not boost performance much.

From what I’ve seen with the current AMD processors, they have a lot of cores, but the performance per core is not as high as it is with Intel. In a highly threaded environment, this can be a huge asset but most games don’t scale well beyond 2-4 cores.

Raijinn.9065:

Dreamslayer.7659:

i7 2600k @ 4.4Ghz / GTX680 / 8GB / SSD

I have shadows usually set to low, but everything else set to max and I get a solid, constant 60fps (maybe 40ish in heavy WvW)

Only I run 1920×1080 × 3 (5760×1080)

It’s nothing short of spectacular.

Good to hear. I have same setup (5900×1080) but only 1 gtx 670 4gb, been wondering if sli is worth it for this game, but that’s looks good enough for me

I used to run dual 680s (in a Silverstone FT03 case) and it was great for Battlefield 3, but I just got tired of that game and sold one of my cards. I could be wrong, but I don’t think it would benefit this game because it seems to be significantly CPU bound.

I’m very picky and if there is a game I play that does not run more or less perfectly, then I will throw hardware at it until it does, but a single 680 is plenty for GW2.

i dont oc. i just dont install any junk on my computer, i use it for games only. seems to run better that way. and my gpu is midrange, not low end, it scored pretty high on performance reviews compared to other midrange cards.

I think this is an often overlooked factor. I keep my system lean and mean – no extra junk but a lot of people seem unable to resist clicking, confirming and downloading everything they can find and then wonder why their system runs so slow…

I like how you blanked out your character name, but anyone can follow or whisper you based on your forum name.

Unless…

You have more than one account.

In which case, you probably bought that will money instead of earning it with sweat and blood and a pure heart like everyone else here.

Notice that nobody ever posts that after 1000 salvages, they think there is a problem?

It’s always after 5-10…

i7 2600k @ 4.4Ghz / GTX680 / 8GB / SSD

I have shadows usually set to low, but everything else set to max and I get a solid, constant 60fps (maybe 40ish in heavy WvW)

Only I run 1920×1080 × 3 (5760×1080)

It’s nothing short of spectacular.

It’s been discussed before.

As much as it would be convenient, it would also make Legendary weapons too common. As it is, you should have to think long and hard before you equip it.

When I was in my 20s, I had a friend who’s grand parents were very wealthy and my friend always had a very nice, expensive new car.

I worked hard and built a career and and at 27 years old, was able to buy a very nice, brand new sports car (with all the options).

Unfortunately, the experience was completely ruined because everyone just assumed I had rich grand parents instead of earning it myself.

People would say “yeah, nice car, you must have awesome grand parents” or "that looks like the new model, but someone your age probably just bought a counterfeit car from China.

Eventually I just broke down and realized I was too young to have dreams and that achievements are over rated because most people just assume you cheat at everything.

So I crashed that car into an embankment, sold it for scrap and then went and bought a junky car like most of my friends had.

So glad I listened to them, they really knew what they were talking about.

Essence Snow.3194:

Khisanth.2948:

JK Arrow.7102:

I think it may even be fair to eliminate farming and say active TP players have by far the most wealth. The amount of gold earned by farming or playing the game seems very linear with a blip or two thrown in due to RNG on something like a precursor. The amount of gold earned off the TP can be exponential. There are probably a substantial amount of players with 1000G+ who have never finished the final mission, got 100% world completion, or gasp hit level 80…

1) Plenty of people who do not like the story.
2) No reason reason for 100% unless you want to make a legendary. The other benefits for 100% are irrelevant if they are as rich as you claim.
3) ANet’s fault for not giving exp for trading.

Some people play the game only for
… sPvP
… open world PvE
… dungeons
… WvW

Why not ‘only for trading’?

Aren’t there trading/merchant/stock market focused games out there for those type of ppl? Just seems those would be better suited for that type of player w/o them pulling the strings on an economy that effects all the ppl in gw2 playing b/c its a fantasy mmorpg.

Imagine the flip side of that coin. Bunch of players going into a trading simulator and messing up all the trade routes b/c it’s more profitable than trading and/or they like messing with the other players.

The market exists intentionally. It’s part of the game.

Did you play Guild Wars 1? Do you remember that the Underworld and Fissure of Woe were only open when your region held the Hall of Heroes? (“Favor of the Gods”) The two had almost nothing to do with each other yet they were connected.

Part of creating a more lifelike world is creating as many interconnected and interdependent systems as possible – just like the real world.

Maybe instead of suggesting that some people go play a market simulation game, they would suggest you go play a single player RPG with static pricing?

You can acquire Exotic gear without using the TP or crafting station, but the fancy stuff requires rare material and it’s rare for a reason. The Trading Post is an arena where players compete for the best resources and items to differentiate themselves from others. You can go find the stuff yourself, or you can buy what you want from other players – but you don’t get to determine their selling price – each player gets to determine what property they will sell and how much they will sell it for.

It’s a very abstracted form of PvP. There are multiple objectives (you get to choose your own) multiple strategies and you get to determine the conditions for victory – whether it’s a legendary weapon or just a nice shade of red dye.

Those items you want but can’t afford? Someone else wants them too and they want them more than you do – and they also found a way to get them.

If you don’t like that meta, you don’t have to play.

I have 418 in Agent of Entropy – with zero exploits. Lots of people who craft, farm or trade a lot will have several hundred in this achievement so I hope that is taken into account.

I see no reason to believe that the currency will be your existing achievement points and even if it were, it would be madness to use existing points as the market would implode due to the shunted demand.

Most likely, you will be able to earn 1 or maybe a few tokens per day. Currently, You can buy almost 4 shards with your daily karma (using a booster) so I would guess the new system will be somewhat aligned with that.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

John Smith.4610:

Vol.5241:

You are under no obligation to reveal that information John Smith, ignore these guys :P

I’d much rather talk about the economics of Guild Wars 2.

-How do you feel about controlling inflation? Do you think the gold sinks we have in the game are sufficient enough to keep the value of gold steady overtime?

Inflation is a really tricky topic. One important thing to understand about inflation (the EVE guys have done a great job explaining this) is that it isn’t a change in the quantity of money available, it’s a change in prices (not individual prices). It’s easy to double the money supply and not inflate the economy.
I won’t speak to our specific strategies, but there are a couple of different ways to go. An interesting strategy that not many people think about is allowing the economy to inflate a bit, then pulling the money back out in a cycle ( many countries do this, but not on purpose :P ) There are specific benefits to this, that only occur as benefits in games.

This statement rings untrue on a few levels.

1) Inflation and the money supply do correlate in economics.

MV = PQ

The reason why inflation hasn’t occurred the same way as a real world model is there’s artificial things going on in GW2. Bots increasing the supply of materials. Every round of bot banning has shown that GW2’s pricing mechanism has been out of whack because Supply and Demand has never been a natural one.

And I am puzzled how you think your second statement is true. You described Monetary policies to a T that are completely intentional in most countries.

One thing to keep in mind about a game vs the real world is that there is not always a consistent relationship between input and output or work and product.

I can go kill X amount of creatures in a certain place and the value I acquire will not be the same as another person doing the same thing.

I assume that the loot tables are fairly static, but I’m sure John and others have thought about connecting the loot tables to the economy in some way.

Let me just speculate and ask – what if this has already happened? What if the loot table is designed to inject a certain amount of certain items into the game at certain intervals?

There have been a lot of complaints about loot but the only official word I have seen seemed to indicate that Anet does not see a problem. Maybe there is no problem because the right amount of loot is being injected into the world, but something about the way it is dispersed or gated means that some people see worse loot than they would with a static RNG based loot table and others might see better results?

Wild speculation on my part, but as a casual armchair wannabe economist, I think it’s an intriguing idea. In a sense, it’s almost the inverse of the DR mechanic: someone who is doing too much of the same thing will see their conduit pinched for a while – but you still need a certain amount of crafting material and loot entering the world at a certain pace and if a bunch of people hit DR, maybe other people experience ER (enhanced returns) – not to compensate the player, but to compensate the economy.

Mithril foil hat firmly in place

I use the Icebreaker as my main hammer.

I had a Ghastly Hammer but didn’t care for the look, so I put the Candy Cane skin on it – it’s fun enough. When I run a particular dungeon a lot, I usually put a +10% vs X sigil on that one.

The Magmaton uses the same skin as the Hammer precursor – it’s one of the better skins for sure.

Nike.2631:

I’m glad there is some sign ANet wants to tie precurrsor acquisition to non-TP effort and less pure extreme luck, but I’m in no crippling rush to see it manifest. I anticipate as the Ascended grade spreads to more and more slots, we’ll see the stat gap widen between those who buy their gear, and those who then take that array of oranges and leverage it to acquire reds in some form of adventuring.

Then it will be the trader’s whining that their preffered playstyle doesn’t carry the best rewards and the wheel turns on and on .

I’m sure there are some players who prefer a white collar career in GW2 above all else, but there is no evidence to support the idea that skill at wealth acquisition corresponds to a skill deficit in the rest of the game.

Many of the wealthy are highly pragmatic players who study all aspects of the game to find the most effective means to a desired end.

I don’t know if it’s an exclusively American troupe to imagine that the football jock is always dim witted or the banker is cowardly and frail but in the real world, many talented people are quite flexible and adaptable – the single talent savant is actually pretty rare.

Yesterday I needed 11 more clovers to hit 77.

I bought 26 shards and thought I would try two runs with 10, then do singles.

First attempt at 10 gave me 20 additional shards!

I thought – great! I’ll just try the 10 batch 3 more times – I’m feeling lucky!

Big mistake – with that many extra, I should have done singles.

So out of 26+20 shards, I ended up with 3 clover.

The Blue Ace.2850:

Ethics.4519:

This isn’t the manipulators fault. This is about %50 of the population’s fault.

Everybody and their mother wants a legendary. Anet never intended everybody to have a legendary. So the game is brand new, the chance of getting a legendary is horridly small which is what is driving the price through the roof. The demand is huge and the supply is ridiculously small.

Anet stand by only a SELECT number of people having a legendary, so they are trying to lower demand by adding ascended gear and letting players focus on that for a little. I don’t play enough to get a legendary so I don’t even try. That allows me to just play the game how I want instead of whining about prices and slaving away at events.

If thats true why do some players have like 5 of them?

Same reason some players in GW1 had more than one set of Obsidian Armor or more than one Voltaic Spear or whatever.

Because they want it enough to figure out how to get it.

I’ve read a lot of comments from people about Legendary weapons and I’m convinced that a lot of people don’t want them very badly or hope they will be able to make enough money over a year or two to get it eventually.

I made enough money in 3 weeks to buy everything I need for my Legendary. It wasn’t anything secret – and in fact, I told several people what I was doing and how to do it.

However, it was time consuming and most people would have considered it a very boring grind and since a lot of people are opposed to “playing” a game in a way that “isn’t fun”, they don’t do it.

A wealthy man once told me something about the wealthy: “If you did what they did, you would have what they have, but you have what you have because you do what you do.”

Everything we do in life has a result and when most people don’t like their result, they try to change the game instead of changing themselves.

LordByron.8369:

this is not real world its a game and his players have to be defended fromspeculators that can destroy the game….

How to do that is really easy, like putting a risk in overpricing items…

For ex, many people buy precursors and sells them at ridiculous prices (i was checking zap, the increase was something like 3G per HOUR for a week….and there aren t that many zap to justify it)…

If for example, anet put on a update an NPC selling 1H precursor at 100G and 2H at 200G:

-people getting their precursor legit by RNG still got a huge bonus.
-gold seller AND speculators lose lot of moneys because people won t buy precursor from them

Putting this risk chance makes the market more balanced because buying and reselling to manipulate the market, has a high risk.

This without hurting legit players.

I don’t agree with the idea that players who make a lot of money through trading or crafting are somehow illegitimate.

I see this quite frequently on the forum and my only conclusion is that some people have personal rules about how the game should be played that are more restrictive than Anet or other players or the TOS.

This may be a distinction in your mind and I don’t want to speculate about what it is based on, but it’s not a distinction in the game or in the minds of everyone else.

Playing the Trading Post, making lots of money and controlling the trading post is just as legitimate as a well organized server shutting another server out of their Borderlands map in WvW.

If it were not, then people would be banned, or mechanisms would be changed.

It’s not like these wealthy players own the patent or control the supply of Precursonium.

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

One of the underlying themes that I really like in GW2 is this:

Most sentient races have both good and evil representatives.

I’ve helped good Ogres, Ettins, Skritt, and I think even Dredge. Among all 5 playable races, there exists an opposing faction.

It’s not heavy handed, but my takeaway was that you should not assume that a particular race or species is hostile or evil just because of the circumstances of their birth.

Even among the animals, you have the tameable pets.

I also like that this example is not taken to ridiculous extremes – I have yet to encounter friendly harpies or destroyers or a devious quaggan.

Don’t forget that this also increases the incentive for people to try to create more precursors in the mystic forge.

You guys are all good sports.

John Smith.4610:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

A couple reasons, but the main reason is that the study of economics is the study of human behavior and psychology and as such, it is imperfect, incomplete and subject to very different interpretations and perspectives.

It’s the voodoo witch doctor profession of our age.

This is very far from the truth.
Even more so inside of MMOs where there is complete data.

In ancient times, being the voodoo witch doctor was probably one of the best professions.

My point is not that data is unavailable, but that even with all of the data, it is still up to a human to do something useful with it and whatever that goal is, it’s going to flow from human belief, experience and bias.

What is the most important thing about the Trading Post and the GW2 economy?

Even if we could agree that the most important thing is that it promotes and facilitates a good player experience and advances the business interests of ANet, we still won’t have people agree on how that should manifest.

Should it be stable? Should it offer maximum freedom to people who want to be traders? Should it incorporate mechanisms to inhibit extreme wealth accumulation? To what degree?

Double Post….

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

A couple reasons, but the main reason is that the study of economics is the study of human behavior and psychology and as such, it is imperfect, incomplete and subject to very different interpretations and perspectives.

It’s the voodoo witch doctor profession of our age.

Animal spirits yo.

Vol.5241:

Himei.5379:

I’ve been lucky to get mystic forge stones for my daily rewards, I still have 140 uses left on my kit and have enough stones to make another.

I ALWAYS use karma to buy crude salvage kit, from my experience it does perfectly fine for white/blue items.

I do notice that Master/Mystic salvage kit have a lower return on ectos compared to BL Kits.

Why not just buy the crude salvage kits that are so cheap at merchants? The WP cost to get to the karma vendor is expensive enough.

It’s an open question as to whether or not the crude kits salvage ecto as well as the masters. They probably do, but I’m not willing to risk the funds to make certain.

It will tell you with a number under the slot if the MF requires more than one.