Guild Wars 2

Ursan.7846:

Gburzak.7035:

To take your example: the next seller is going to put it either at 699, or at 700 as well.

Right, exactly. Which is why you see a sudden jump in the price. If one person does it, other people quick follow and post similar prices. It doesn’t have to be all one person, you know (which is what you’re saying)

No, this is not why I see a sudden jump in the price. This is why you always see a constant, small (or very small) decrease in the prices until an equilibrum is found between the asking and offered price. The sudden increase of price can only be related to people (or, as I am persuaded was the case here, one person) buying out all lower priced items. Which is absolutely possible in this game due to the relatively small amount of precursors offered at any given time.

Ursan.7846:

By the way, how are you getting the “someone bought out 10-15 Zaps and put them up for higher price?” I’m looking at GWspidy, and nowhere does Zap’s sell listings exceeds 3.

I do not know nor use GWspidy, link please. I have no idea how reliable a source it is, but I know for certain there were at least 4 Zaps offered in the range of 320-350, it has been like that for over a week and different people buying them out all at the same time (as stated previously – within less than 2 hours) seems extremely unlikely, given how stable the market was.

Ursan.7846:

I posted that link hoping to show you that sell listings =/= supply. Dawn/Dusk has like 2/3 sell listings at most, but the actual available supply is much higher than that. So basically what you see on the sell listings is NOT all the Zaps that are available.
This is why it’s almost impossible to monopolize anything.

I am assuming that by “the actual supply is much higher” you mean not all Zap’s in game are offered at the TP, and not that the game information is wrong (or is it? according to TP, on European servers there is currently 3 Zap’s offered).

Assuming the above – why would you keep a precursor instead of selling it? 1) you want to craft the legendary yourself (most obvious case), 2) you hope the price will increase in the future and you will sell it for better profit (I would bet a lot this is a much, much less likely case). So, the precursor’s on offer are those people want to change into cash, and therefore constitute the “market” as it is. It is irrelevant to speak of the rest, imho.

And yes, give the “market” for precursors is extremely small, it is entirely possible to monipolize it. Check the numbers. With the 3 Zap’s on offer right now (again, I assume the ingame data is not wrong) – how hard to monopolize is that?

Ursan.7846:

Gburzak.7035:

What stops such people of doing it all over again in a week, and setting the price at 1000 lets say?

The fact that beyond a certain price, no one will buy it for for that price. If prices stays the same/rises, it simply means people can still afford them. And plenty of precursors are still moving around at these current prices.

You are wrong again, and in real life the luxury goods market is a very good example to prove it. There is always a market for luxury goods, no matter how high you set the price. Some people will always buy it. Some people will spend $2000 in the gem shop, or a smaller amount at gold sellers, and get the cash required even if you offer precursors at 1500 gold +. Millions of people play this game. You think you will not find a dozen ready to pay that much for a Zap? (to stay within the example we’ve been using).

Ursan.7846:

But I will say this. One seller puts up an item for 700G. What’s the next seller gonna put it up as? 500G? How about a huge KITTENING no?

You obviously never studied statistics, nor do you understand how market’s work. Pick any precursor you like, and watch how the price fluctuates. To take your example: the next seller is going to put it either at 699, or at 700 as well. The push is to beat the current price by a small margin, not to increase it. I was following the situation with Zap very closely as I was about to buy it. The price was very stable for over a week (after the initial post-patch push upwards, when all sellers realized the less popular precursors are going to get much more attention due to changes), it did fluctuate, but by a spread of no more than 10-15 gold. The change of the price by almost 100% up happened within less than 2 hours of real time (as this is how often I was checking it). The only logical and plausible theory that explains this is market manipulation; statistically speaking, it is all but impossible every seller of this precursor suddenly had the very same idea to push the price upward (and by how much). Statistically speaking, it is not even possible most of them were online during that time.

Now that is what I call an intelligent response to my post. No arguments, several invocations to God, and a link to a post which doesn’t clarify anything. So what, about 10 of each kind of precursor “move” every day. Yep. That’s what happened today: one person bought up 10 or 15 available and now sells them twice as high. Or maybe you want people to believe -ALL- sellers somehow got the idea to increase the price by 100% at the very same moment.

Hint: if you take part in a discussion, actually have something to say first.

The precursor prices are not fair, and are manipulated by people with monstrous money at their disposal. Gold sellers immediately come to mind. The system is terribly flawed, with precursors being so hard to acquire the price can be dictated basically at any level – so long as you can afford to monopolize the market. This happened with Zap today, the price which was around 330 for the last week suddenly skyrocketed to 500. Someone bought out all, let me repeat – ALL available Zap’s and offered them back at almost twice the price. Really sounds fair to you? What stops such people of doing it all over again in a week, and setting the price at 1000 lets say?
Anet promised to make this game fun, but they are terribly failing on this front right now. Something should be changed because the situation is becoming absurd.

Oh, you also first have to play a class who is actually able to make a combo finisher that works (or rather, is counted). Don’t try with guardian, you will waste you time. Good night.

Suggestion: next time when you introduce a new daily quest, please give us more time. Make it work from the next day after the patch. You can’t imagine how frustrated I am after spending 2 hours trying to get any combo finisher to work with my guardian, finally finding out guardian is a “no – no” (every other class seemed to be able to make it, dozens of ppl made it around me, but no guardian, ever), then finding out it does somehow work underwater, and then the daily reseting before I was able to complete it. Not nice, not cool, and a good way to just make people angry. As suggested, give us a whole day so we don’t feel cheated when we fail to get that first laurel because of some bugs you didn’t eliminate before applying the patch.