Guild Wars 2

The point of this thread is to collect data, so we can find out what has changed. If it’s substantially for the worse, we can use that data to recommend changes (or a revert to the old behavior). If it’s for the better, we can use it to help people understand what’s new.

@LordEnki: down-leveled exotics aren’t necessarily worth less. On the whole, I’ve found them sometimes more valuable than pearl skins (which are cheaper because of high supply due to leveling crafts) and sometimes they have high-value sigils. There’s not enough data to determine if the current outputs are worth less, on average, then the old outputs.

Sometimes “about face” doesn’t work, regardless of other keys. I haven’t found any pattern to it: it’s not combat, other movement, other keys, skills on cooldown, etc.

Suggestion: convert cultural armor and weapon vendors so that they sell account-bound skins instead of soulbound gear. This could also apply to Orders armor & weapons.

Background: Originally, there were various balance/gameplay reasons in selling soulbound gear that was L35, L60, and L80 rare items with specific stats. With the introduction of the wardrobe system, the primary value for most players is the ability to reskin their gear.

Unfortunately, this means most veterans will pay twice: gold (or karma) for each item and at least one transmutation charge. Except for rare cases, the original acquisition will be largely wasted, since the level, stats, or rarity will be a poor fit for the character.

I recommend replacing the system so that spending the gold (or karma) gives the player a skin that can be applied once for free.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The wardrobe seems to have had almost no effect on skins for whatever reason. Just look at some of the older skins like the southsun skins.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37216
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37221

There’s only 140 and 160 of these skins and they have been unobtainable for over a year. Yet they didn’t budge at all when the wardrobe launched.

Picking two skins out of over 1,000 isn’t enough to establish a pattern. Further, those specific skins were already selling at premium prices before the announcement of the wardrobe — many such skins dropped in price after the announcements (e.g. I acquired Final Rest and Charzooka for about half what they used to sell for) and then rose back up after the patch.

I can tell you that I’m making good money by selling a variety of skins at 50-100% more than pre-patch: verdant, norn, and other skins that drop as loot.

In any feature-driven destabilization, there are going to be some items that break the general pattern. Or that fit a different pattern, as in the case of premium/low-supply skins compared to uncommon skins that still have a large supply.

If the game never adds new players, then sure, ultimately, the demand for specific skins is going to drop off. But, for a variety of reasons, ANet will continue to make sure there’s a reason for people to start (or restart) playing GW2. New players will drive the demand for skins, so it will depend on how good ANet is at attracting them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Orichalcum-tools-giving-ruined-items

I just did it 4x in the last four days, so try guesting to one of the high population servers in your region and then see if you get into a different map. My guess is there are probably 3-4 instances of Cursed Shore per region for most of the day.

I haven’t seen a problem. I’m getting the same +15% from it now as since I first equipped it. (There are a number of events I do regularly and I’m getting the same bonus karma from them.)

Issues that are annoying, but have low impact and narrow scope tend to be lower priority to fix, especially when they are difficult to reproduce and don’t have an obvious solution.

• It only affects some people some of the time. (“Narrow scope”)
• It might be annoying, but it has a small impact on the game’s economy (a somewhat larger impact on node farmers and a greater one on botters that farm nodes). (“Low impact.”)
• It’s not “game blocking.” (“Not urgent.”)

Additionally, while there are lots of plausible theories, I haven’t seen any posts demonstrating how to replicate this on demand, especially any that explain why it seems to affect ore more often than wood and doesn’t seem to affect veggies/fruits/herbs at all.

While I’d like to see this fixed, I don’t see it as a high priority. Given the choice, I’d prefer to see other bugs fixed or new features/QoL elements added instead.

If you review the limited data we have since the patch, for forging rares with an average level of 75+:

• the precursor drop rate is the same (within the error of measurement)
• the odds of a named exotic appear to be higher
• the odds of getting a valuable skin/sigil seem to be at least as good, if not better
• the odds of getting an L7x item are (obviously) higher, but at the expense of the relatively lower value exotics, e.g. fewer pearl skins.

tl;dr bug or not, if you forge a lot, you won’t be taking much of a financial hit (you might even be doing better than pre-patch)

Until we have more data, I don’t think anyone can say we are worse off than before.

PS I am not sure why anyone expects to receive feedback on this. Typically, the devs don’t comment on RNG unless/until we produce data showing there is an issue.

Zdain.2169:

Flushing 4x level 80 exotic armors got me a level 75 exotic …

…The death of the magic “sum of levels = 300+” guaranteeing a max level if the output is exotic is the only change that I’m certain of so far.

Yeah, I’m surprised that tweak wasn’t announced in the patch notes. I don’t know that it’s financially worse (at least, not at the moment), but it’s surprising. It also makes it hard to know whether anything else was adjusted.

Prior to the patch, we had good data supporting that the chance of an upgrade (e.g. master -> rare) was 20%, but we had little data on the distribution of the results. If that changed, I’m not sure we could demonstrate it easily. Perhaps before the patch, dye drops from the forge were equally likely and now (perhaps) some dyes drop more frequently. Pre-patch, we know that sigils and runes didn’t drop in equal numbers, but if the ratios changed, we’d also have trouble showing that.

Ken DeBoer.9268:

It looks like the MF is working as intended as it is giving a wider array of outputs, but that just means that you have a higher risk of getting crap. I usually throw a hundred or so weapons into the MF lottery, but I’ve been selling/holding onto mats until they make a statement about the MF.

Yes, I believe it to be “working as intended.” My question is: what was intended and do we have some data about how it is now working?

Ken DeBoer.9268:

I know that the precursor reward was around 1% (I know a little less) but if the output now can give 75+ exos, the % has to be lower.

The % for precursors doesn’t have to change. And the data we have so far shows that the L7x outputs are lowering the chances of L80s with similar common skins, e.g. for greatswords, the pearl (crafted) skin chances are equal with the Iron skins and their combined total is similar to pre-patch rates for the pearl skins alone.

Killface.1896:

Its to great for stealth class´s that can just pop ooc at will so no thx.

Perhaps I didn’t explain my suggestions well. The functionality to do this in already in the game. It’s already possible to swap weapons quickly out-of-combat. Those who are quick to move their mouse can do this easily, if they lose aggro while stealthed. Heck, even I can do it.

But for the vast majority of us, it’s horribly tedious to swap sets out of combat. I’d like it to be less cumbersome than it is now.

Wanze.8410:

Ken DeBoer.9268:

Farming Flats.5370:

Before the april patch you get a lvl 80 out of 4 lvl 80 in the forge …. now even if you use 4 lvl 80 exotic you can get a lvl 79 … i think its bugged

I was going to mention this same thing. Since you may get any exo from lv 75+ that increases the pool of exotics you are pulling from, reducing the chance at obtaining a precursor from the MF.

It was mentioned in the patch notes that precursor drops from the forge are the same.

It’s unlikely to be a bug, because it specifically affects L80 forging, not lower level forges. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing: the skins and sigils are different on the L7x items and it might be the case that named weapons are dropping more frequently, i.e. the overall financial benefits might be about the same compared to pre-patch.

Good luck both of you. If you have time, please let us know what you find out.

@OP: I recommend you create a support ticket so someone can look over your individual situation. I agree with the other posters that it’s possible that your status is as it should be, but I suspect it’s also possible that something else might be going on. We’re not going to be able to resolve it on the forums.

However, the support team can do the research and figure out what, if anything, is going on.

The prices of all skins went up due to the patch, legendaries included. Since equipping a single weapon unlocks the looks for all your characters, demand is spiking, but there’s no corresponding increase in supply.

But that will change, if not soon then not too much longer after that.

Gone are the days when people are likely to work to craft two incinerators (no need to do all that work when you can double wield and work on another legendary). So the demand by the current crop of players will start to drop, while the demand from newer players won’t be much different. I doubt that the prices will drop back all the way, but if I could short the market, I’d do so.

I’m in favor of your suggestion to allow WvW gear to be forged and to allow recovery of upgrades from any soulbound equipment. However, I doubt this will have any noticeable impact on the market supply of precursors.

Allow us to easily swap between multiple weapon sets while out-of-combat. (In Guild Wars 1, we could do this by pressing F1-F2-F3-F4; in GW2, we can only change sets manually, through the equipment or inventory panels.)

Typically, a lot of people use 3-4 sets of weapons:

1. For running. Includes more speed bursts or distractions for foes along the way.
2. For quick combat. Something to get the job done quickly, when the risk is low.
3. Farming and (some) world boss events: something with the ideal autoattack for the situation.
4. Special circumstances. A few skills that work great in one situation, but not another.

Right now, it’s tedious to switch repeatedly, especially when you have collected other, similar weapons along the way. Sure, some people would use this to add a few more slots to inventory, but in the long run, it’s not going to slow down the demand for runes of holding, extra bag slots, or storage toons.

Ideally, you could cycle each set (for the six professions that can run two during combat) via a key, but it would also be okay to go into the hero panel to swap; that would still be easier than the manual situation we have now.

serapheles.5409:

(Minor error, 20% of 1000 is 200)

The chance of getting a l7x item is the only change I’ve noticed, though I don’t have a significant sample size. I’m curious if they reduced the chance of getting karma items, or made certain items forgable (that were not previously).

Fixed the typo — thanks for that.

I didn’t collect specific data on karma/soulbound items, but I’m still getting both from the relevant source materials, i.e. 4x major runes might return a soulbound major or superior rune and low-level blues/greens might return low-level gear found in the wild only at karma vendors. tl;dr no change in Zommy’s qualitative behavior in that regard.

In the official news about the 2014 Feature Patch , ANet said:

The Mystic Forge is going to get a lot of changes this year. To kick things off, we’re adjusting the way Zommoros distributes rare and exotic rewards a bit, allowing for more variation in output. This is just a stepping stone to further changes that will make the Mystic Forge a much better experience in the future. Please note: the rate of precursors will not be affected.

The Official Patch notes have only one line about the forge (other than notes about Unidentified Dyes and removing PvP recipes):

Some Mystic Forge recipes have been updated to provide a wider range of results.

Does anyone have any data that helps the rest of us understand what has changed? I’d be happy to update this post as people reply, so that we can gather all the data together and compare notes.

Anecdotally, it seems that Zommoros is still offering a 20% to upgrade items, e.g. flush 4,000 rares (1,000 flushes) and you should “expect” to get 200 exotics. That seems to hold true for fine and masterwork dyes, minor & major runes/sigils, and gear (masterwork and rare — I haven’t tried forging exotics or any armor).

The only hard data I’ve seen published was a single post on Reddit, which similarly showed that the upgrade rates have remained the same, but sometimes four L80 rares can “upgrade” into L7x exotics (instead of the expected L80s). There’s little financial hit compared to pre-patch for two reasons:

1. The sub-L80 items tend to sell at a similar premium to their L80 counterparts (due to either skins or upgrades or both).
2. The poster saw a lot more named weapons than I’ve seen in previous posts.

Summary of the Data (from over 1,200 rare GS reportedly flushed)

• Common skins: 42.8% = Iron Greatswords (L7x): 21.4% & Pearl (L80): 21.4%
• Semi-common skins (Orrian/Legion/Tribal): 4.2% = L7x: 1.4% & L80: 2.8%
• Uncommon skins (Ceremonial/Etched): 24.3% = L7x: 12.9% & L80: 11.4%
• Named weapons: 27.1%
• Precursor: 1.4%

Previous pre-patch posts I’ve seen about combining large number of greatswords show similar numbers: about 40-50% common skins, 15-20% semi-common, 13-18% uncommon, 14-18% named, and 0.5% precursor. The biggest difference is the one person finding a lot more named weapons at the expense of semi-common skins.

tl;dr Do we have any data on what has changed about the mystic forge, aside from L80 rares upgrading to L7x exotics (and perhaps more named weapons dropping)?

edit #1: fixed typo, per Serapheles note below (thanks)

SafiMoyo.5130:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

this reddit post

The link is broken

Fixed — thanks for letting me know (I would have sworn I double-checked and visited the link even after posting, but apparently… my QA team was taking a break at the time.)

I think the OP’s opening language has misled some of us to misunderstand the request. If I understood the intent correctly, the question is, “when should we expect ANet to give us a preview of what’s to come for the remainder of 2014?”

That seems like a reasonable question, even if ANet might not be able to answer it anytime soon.

I actually like it the way it is: when I am using a kit, I think it’s more fun to see the backpack change.

However, I understand where the OP is coming from, which is why I support the idea of a toggle: always show the back item skin vs showing the pack from the equipped kit.

That said: OP, I don’t think you’ll get much traction on the idea by posting this in the bug forum. I recommend using the engineer forum instead (or the general forum, i.e. Guild Wars 2 Discussion).

Yeah, it’s an obvious bug, but the causes (and solutions) aren’t obvious. I’m sure if it was easy to fix, they would have done it ages ago (if only to stop people complaining about it).

I’ve had stability and not gotten ruined logs or ore chunks. I’ve had no stability, but had ruined results. It’s not consistent and not repeatable, at least not in my experience.

That makes it hard to pinpoint the cause. And since it’s merely annoying (and not game breaking), I imagine that ANet isn’t putting a priority on resolving it.

Suggestion: Make underwater helms cosmetic only.

Currently, breathers serve no purpose in the game except to nerf builds and to make setting up gear more difficult and costly:

• There are no rare, exotic, or ascended breathers (the exceptions are supplied at too low a rate to benefit the community as a whole).
• All breathers require karma, meaning they cannot be salvaged for materials or to regain any valuable runes. They also cannot be transferred to another character.
• They have no functional impact: characters can remove the helm and function under water without ill effect, aside from the loss of a sixth rune.

With the new wardrobe, there’s an easy solution (from the player perspective — I have no idea if this would be difficult to code or not): use the currently equipped helm for stats/runes and apply the cosmetic look of the skin from a wardrobe. This could still cost 1 transmutation charge, but I doubt many would use it since there are precious few breather skins available.

tl;dr remove breathers as equipment; use the regular helm as gear and a cosmetic skin for looks.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Its not true. With megaservers, TC doesn’t exist except in wvw. If you try to RP with anyone trolls will come to you in an instant and try to stop you and your friends. The mega sever separates everyone, and its impossible to get on the same map as your fellow RPers.

This. TC and all other servers (outside of WvW) have ceased to exist except in name.

That’s only remotely true. 90% of the time, I see the same names in /map and /local chat since DR changed to mega server. I see more RPers now outside Salma gate than I did pre-patch. The only places that I regularly don’t see TCers is in places that used to have no one: Mount Maelstrom, Snowden Drifts, etc.

I wouldn’t say that Megaserger has had no impact on RPing or on Coasters building a community, but it’s relatively minor in my experience. The community is still (mostly) fantastic (we do have our trolls and disgruntled players, but much fewer than when I’m guesting to other servers, even post patch).

tl;dr if you are just starting the game, I would strongly recommend signing up for TC as your home world, and especially recommend it if you RP.

Every time the game is offered at a discount, I see an increase in gold sellers. /block and /report and I never see them again. The first week after the patch, I saw 20; this week: none.

Suggestion: Reclassify the limited edition dyes so that they are Exotic rather than Rare. This will make it easier to search for them on the Trading Post without having to type the names in separately.

This would apply to the exclusive dyes from Flame, Frost, Deathly, Toxic, and other limited-edition packs/kits, e.g. all the Enameled colors.

Exotic would also fit better, given their limited supply.

This isn’t a bug — this was intended by ANet. Some of us might not like — as you say, it makes farming nodes more difficult.

However, in practice, not much has changed. Unless there’s a world boss or temple event on the map, I can log on a dozen times over several hours and find the nodes in the same place, across several characters. This goes for Southsun, Orr, and Frostgorge.

While annoying, the temporary work-around is easy: leave the mists, open the boxes, and return (and PvPers must, alas, leave the mists periodically for other reasons).

Second, +20% isn’t going to make that much of a difference over a short period of time — it takes 100s or 1000s of drops (rolls of the dice) before the difference will be noticeable. (Remember it took comparing 1000s of results from a lot of researchers just to convince people that 200% MF mattered.)

Of course it makes some difference, but I wouldn’t call this an urgent issue, especially considering that the last patch made massive changes to the game. ANet will fix it eventually and (as noted above) it might be “just” a display issue.

For specific evidence, see this reddit post — 1270 L80 greatswords flushed; about 1/3 of results were sub-L80

By comparing to pre-patch results, it appears as if the non-named weapons are now evenly divided between L7x and L80. For example, the redditor received the same amount of etched weapons as I would have expected based on the results of pre-patch research, but half their Etched weapons were L80 and the other half were L76-78.

As it turns out, this doesn’t result in much of a financial hit to forging certain weapon types:

• The skins are (mostly) more valuable now than before (i.e. selling at a premium compared to pre-patch values).
• Some of the sigils also tend to be valuable, for those who have BL kits. (e.g. Pearl weapons have no sigil, but some of the Iron ones have Superior Accuracy)

Still, it’s troubling that a change this big wasn’t mentioned in the patch notes, if it was intended.

Summary of result cited above:
Ordinary:

• Iron Greatswords (L7x): 21.4%
• Pearl (L80): 21.4%

Ceremonial/Etched

• L7x: 12.9%
• L80: 11.4%

Orrian/Legion/Tribal:

• L7x: 1.4%
• L80: 2.8%

Coveted:

• Named: 27.1%
• Precursor: 1.4%

edit: fixing link

I give away stuff all the time. The most valuable stuff goes to friends, e.g. I gave a lot of high-gold valued presents. Any time I start chatting with a newbie in /map, I usually send them some silver and some dyes — I don’t want to give them a lot of coin (and thus spoil their introduction to the game); it’s just enough so they don’t have to sweat the small stuff.

The dyes are minor luxury items that don’t seem affordable to most new players (especially since the drop rate nerf that accompanied the account-bound change to the wardrobe).

I am, however, a lot more generous with my time. I’d much rather teach people how to fish than to give away gold. I’ve probably helped around 20 strangers learn to play the TP (and incidentally: of them, only 2-3 felt it was worth their time).

(I’m, erm, 99% sure I’m not one of the 1%ers, based on watching the vids for people who do industrial production of precursors and other power traders, not to mention seeing the bling worn by people in my WvW guild — I just have more coin than most of the people I play with regularly.)

Since “Aftermath” was released, two of the JPs no longer have a clear trigger point for the “Daily Puzzle Discoverer” achievement. Each has an entrance that was modified by the city’s destruction.

• Troll’s End: the entrance used to be as you jumped in the well. However, the well (and surrounding environment) was changed significantly.
• Urmaug’s: I believe this JP’s trigger was on/near the bridge just outside the cave, but half that bridge has been removed.

I tested this with a friend, together and separately. We “stepped on” as many possible trigger points as possible. We walked on/around the old trigger locations, tried other likely routes to the puzzles, and even tried several improbably locations. If there is a trigger today for either, it’s so hard to find as to defy the point of the achievement.

This isn’t a “game blocker,” since there are plenty of other JPs; it’s just annoying, because LA is especially convenient with its three puzzles and free waypoints.

Thanks.

The current system includes over a dozen world bosses that can potentially spawn anywhere from over 24x/day to at least 8x/day. The new system substantially reduces these numbers to 6x/day for the smaller/medium bosses and only 3x/day for those with the largest rewards. This results in fewer opportunities for those on a tight schedule, substantially reduced rewards for farmers, and a more regimented world (in contrast to the dynamic system currently in place).

I’d like to see this modified in two ways:

1. Some bosses should spawn more often, simultaneous with other bosses of their equivalent level. For example, the “baby” bosses (Fire Ele, Shadow Behemoth, Maw, and Caledon Worm) could spawn at the same time once per hour (24x day, slightly less than current rate and twice the current plan). Similarly, the “mediums” (Megadestroyer, Covington, Ugloth, and Golem MII) could also spawn together every other hour (12x/day, about twice as often as the new plan and overall less often than currently).
2. The boss rewards should be substantially rebalanced, both to make up for the reduced number of event chains leading up to the boss’ appearance and also the amount of chest drops, including Dragonite. Perhaps the automatic character & account DR (Diminishing Returns) could be removed, since the feature patch will substantially remove the reasons for its introduction, i.e. since the number of times you can fight each boss will be limited by the clock, there’s no reason to maintain the limits on the number boss or bonus chests one can receive (per character and per account, respectively).

The above proposal and analysis doesn’t account for one of the best aspects of the new patch: guilds of sufficient size are going to be able to spawn events at will, limited only by influence, merits, and build times. Unfortunately, this won’t apply or appeal to a substantial portion of the player base. Additionally, even with a guild popping events faster than a kid snaps the bubble wrap, the new system will see a marked reduction in the number of potential bosses seen each day.

Comparison of Potential Spawns Before/After Patch

• New Bosses : from a potential of 12x/day down to exactly 3x/day (Karka Queen, 3-Headed Wurm, Tequatl)
• Original Dragons: 8x ? 6x (Shatterer, Claw)
• Baby Bosses: 36x ? 12x (Fire Ele, Maw/Shaman, Shadow Behemoth, Caledon Worm)
• Medium Bosses: 12x ? 6x (Megadestroyer, Taidha Covington)
• Old Style Bosses: 36x ? 6x (Modniir Ulgoth & Golem Mark II)
• TBD: 0 ? 5

For each category, the first number is the current estimated theoretical number of times the event can spawn per day. The second number reflects the chart published on the official site.

Bug or not, it’s moot now. On the 15th, the OP will be able to apply the fractal skin to whatever weapon (of the same type) that they choose.

@DeepBlue: if you want support to work on this, you will need to create a ticket (link at top of this page). They respond to every message, so if you haven’t seen a response, it means that there’s a problem with the mail — most likely, your email provider is overly aggressive about filtering spam, so check your spam folder.

Generally speaking the devs don’t respond to every message in the bug forum — there just isn’t enough time in the day to post that often.

Glad your issue got fixed.

John Smith.4610:

mtpelion.4562:

Champ farming was a TERRIBLE way to try and make gold. It was mainly for XP, crafting materials, karma, and luck, none of which are impacted by this change.

If you were farming champs for the gold drops… I mean… I don’t even know what to say…. maybe “don’t”?

It’s true that champ farming is by a wide margin not the best way to make gold (not counting TP either)

Champ Farming is not the most economically efficient way to make gold. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the “best” method…for some people.

In particular, it’s clear that for many, farming champs is by far and away the best method. It requires no risk, little effort, and requires almost no attention by the player — this allows people bandwidth to chat with non-gaming friends, watch TV, or even do homework.

I speculate that this is among the reasons the coin from champ bags is being cut: this allows people to champ farm if they want, but reduces the reward for things that require little individual effort.

Regardless, I will never see champ farming as the “best” tool for earning coin, even if it were 10x more efficient than any other, because I find myself bored out of my skull after 1-2 rounds of the circuit. I far prefer to run dungeons/fractals, open world chains, or WvW behind a strong commander.

I enjoyed the story and that the game was being constantly updated. I didn’t feel any grind towards accomplishing achievements after we were able to complete the meta by doing the event-related dailies, plus many times, we had 4 weeks to complete them.

What I’d like to see change:

1. Make use of the in-game hint system to guide people towards learning about lore and important mechanics in the game. It was great the Taimi et al would explain what to do, but we should also be able to learn about this when not in the midst of battle. For lore, the hint system would not directly explain things, but would “suggest” locations where you might find an NPC who has more info. (However, please don’t offer any additional achievement points for unlocking these hints.)
2. As many have stated, stop hiding the ball: no more lore/mechanics exclusively outside the game and introduce as many of the NPCs as early as possible. Even though I think Scarlet is great, it would have been more interesting to have met Ceara and only later realize that she was behind the alliance attacks.
3. Continue introducing large scale events that require cooperation amongst PUGs. No other MMO even tries to do this. People said repeatedly that random groups would never be able to defeat the Marionettes and it was great fun when we pulled that off repeatedly. I can go to other games to find instanced raids requiring specific roles; this is the only one that is massively, multiplayer rather than micromangedly scheduled player.

Here’s the deal: they could have included crafting stations at Vigil Keep. They either forgot to or chose not to. And I can see why that bugs people.

On the other hand, with the exception of crafting, you can do everything at V Keep; with the exception of forging, you can do everything in the racial cities. Without exception, you can do everything in WvW (although that can be inconvenient depending on the queue and the availability of waypoints). And I can see why those facts make a lot of folks think this is a non-issue.

What I think is that ANet should try harder to avoid these sorts of situations: here’s a brand-new, shiny release with a lot of interesting and (for me) fun content. And instead of of playing it, people are grumbling on the forums about the potential inequity.

Far better for the game if Vigil Keep had exactly the same services as LA did and if the Airship Pass offered something that LA didn’t have (e.g. services being closer together, same as Royal Terrace).

The expected value of forging 4 fine dyes is about 6.37 silver, assuming all dyes have an equal chance to drop and fine dyes drop 4 times out of 5, masterworks the remaining 1 out of 5. (And published data suggests those are fair assumptions.) After fees, that leaves about 5.42s.

So you can make a profit from forging as long as you keep your cost/fine below 1.35s.

But, as I noted above, the more likelier assumption is that these dyes are being bought to flip. The amount of effort is less and the profit margin is higher (reducing the risk considerably).

Historically, it has often been more profitable to forge.

WvW has always had people who prefer to farm rewards (karma trainers) and those who want to fight “legitimately” (and those subdivide into PPTers vs strategists vs GvGers). The introduction of EotM has largely, in my limited capacity as an observer, separated those two broad groups: farmers are in EotM and those focused on “real” WvW remain in the original maps.

On the whole, I think this promotes more interesting game play. However, EotM is still new and I expect that people are still figuring out where and how they want to play. I think it will be another 2-3 months before we have a new status quo that we can analyze.

The sell prices for all of those dyes runs from 1.93s to 2.70s, so the flipping return rate (after fees) is 40-90% or more. (Of course, the market will adapt, so some of that profit will dry up.)

For example, last time I checked the data, Silver Lead was WTB =1.01s and WTS = 2.12s, so the theoretical buyer is going to earn well over 50c or so by flipping.

Last time I ran prices (about 2 hrs ago), you could buy the “set” and sell the skin and still make money as follows:

• Pink Quaggan buy @3.99g | sell @5.13 | profit (after taxes) ~0.3g
• Cheetah Charr buy @0.75g | sell @1.04 | profit (after taxes) ~0.1g
• Tiger Charr buy @1g | sell @1.48 | profit (after taxes) ~0.2g
• Quaggan Killer Whale buy @2.80g | sell @4.42g | profit (after taxes) ~0.9g

(Prices in gold and using “custom buy” aimed at rapid acquistion & “custom sell” quick recovery of gold.)

Your mileage will vary, since those prices change frequently and I’ve posted conservative targets for both buy and sell.

GW2Crafts also has a 450-500 guide (not just 400 to 500).

Last week as green, I hardly saw anything but red on the map. This week, as red, I see a lot of blue in EotM. Meanwhile, my friends talk about the great fights they are having.

I suspect it’s very dependent on:

• the specific overflow
• how well your server (and its counterparts) are doing in regular WvW
• day of week and time of day.

Samuirai.4561:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781

I thought about adding some skins to the item list but the problem I had was that those were introduced later. And then it is very difficult to compare previous numbers. For example if I would include the Dreamhistle Weapons, I couldn’t include almost a year of gw2.

Good point. What I was thinking (and didn’t clarify) is to use a type of average of the available skins:

• there will always be a “current” skin, costing 1 ticket
• there will always be a “most recent” skin, that just started costing multiple tickets.
• the rest will be available forever at a set cost (3, 5, or 7 tickets).

I imagine with some trial and error, one could weight these in relation to each other. It will be a lot more guesswork than the standard US bundle of goods, but even that involves some trial & error.

Samuirai.4561:

It is easy for me to generate those charts when I got a list of items. If somebody wants to write down a list with exactly the items and quantities, I would generate a chart and post it here:

item_id, item_name, quantity

That’s a very generous offer and a great idea. I’d love to see some more discussion around what types of bundles are worth looking at over time and what those bundles should contain. I’ll give it some more thought and put together a list based on the categories I outlined in my earlier post and we can see if that shows us anything interesting about the market’s evolution.

I doubt we can ever find a true market basket of goods that reflects everyone’s needs. Instead, what I’m hoping is that we can setup multiple bundles that reflect large subsets of the community. Those who play have played one main since launch have different spending habits than a new player with multiple alts or collectors (those who want every dye, every mini, every piece of cultural armor, …).

My comment about the word “inflation” is strictly related to the rhetoric, and not the definition: using the word generates a lot of passion and thus it tends to distract from anything else being discussed.

I think it’s perfectly fine for non-economists to use the word to mean “stuff costs more gold now,” even though professionals (and internet amateurs) would argue that’s technically incorrect. However, since no two people quite agree on the word’s meaning, I try to avoid using it when discussing things like GW2’s economy.

Behellagh.1468:

…the BLCs were the Whitman Sampler of Gem Store items. And …now there’s a “Chance to enter drawing for $1 million dollars” sticker on the box.

Awesome description of the contents. I’ve been referring to them as a lotto ticket, but your metaphor is more accurate.

The supply of conduits in the game has always been tiny relative to the population. Since the recipes have been withdrawn, no new conduits are being introduced to the market. Further, since it’s a luxury item (there is, after all, a completely free Mystic Forge access point available in LA, Eternal Battlegrounds, and each home borderland), only the wealthiest fraction of players can afford them.

Hardly anyone who owns one is likely to be interested in selling, except to flip. For example, none of these people will sell: those who use the forge 100s or 1,000s of times per day, those who stopped playing (e.g. many of those I know who got rich fast got bored quickly too), and of course, at least a few of the wealthiest account have been banned.

So the only thing I have trouble understanding is: why did it take so long for the price of conduits to go beyond 200g?

Arguably, conduits have better utility than the permanent TP Express, which doesn’t have as limited a supply, so I’ve always expected the price of the conduits to be double that of the unlimited TP access.

I don’t consider it a meaningful issue that someone attempted to corner the market and try to artificially raise the price to what they considered the “correct” market value. I’m willing to bet that a lot of flippers got burned attempting to make a quick profit (and a few flippers made out like bandits).

In any case, it seems to me that the current price of 300-500g is relatively more in line with other finite-supply luxuries and with the general trend of the markets in this game.