Guild Wars 2

SirDrygan.1823:

John Smith.4610:

Every account has the exact same chance on RNG.

I don’t for once believe that. The fact that my Ranger is the only one able to drop Pre-cursors, while my first char an Ele which I played for the majority of the hours I spend in GW2 could only get as best Exotics even during Mystic Toilet dropping.

When I got The Hunter, you know how many rares I drop into the Mystic Toilet?
A total of 4.
Yes, 4.

As for the Spark, its the same story. 4 total.

And on both occasions, it was because I wanted to get rid of the rares that is hogging up my bags I didn’t expect it.

As for the Venom, I couldn’t remember where i got it, but I think it was during a dungeon run with my Ranger….

While my Ele which is my main char most of the time with hundreds and hundreds of World Boss kills and Dungeon runs, meta runs, best she has got is only Exotics. Even fractals runs (lets not count the bonus chest where you get Asc rings, because I got about 3 of those, while the rest are bought by laurels) and even on purpose dropping rares into the Mystic Toilet. My ele is 0 precursors after 1439 hours+. Remember, with the most World Boss Kills and Champ kills and dungeon runs, Fractal runs.

While my Ranger is 203hours+ and she is 3 pre-cursors and counting. I don’t like using my Ranger because it’s boring and with a pet, I am always just standing there pew pewing.

My Guardian and Necro are occasional Exotic drops. Like 1 or 2 after a long long time.

My Mesmers 2 of them hardly get me anything worth while.

My warriors? I don’t remember getting anything better than rares, And those are from the bonus chest, not the boss chest.

As for the rest of my characters, it’s white, blue and greens…….

It is hard to get a precursor with 3 or 5 rares

Btw do you want to tell us that you threw a total of 8 rares into MF and you got 2 precursors? You have to include ALL of your attempts if you want to prove something.

X T D.6458:

No offense, but I will never believe that for a second. Ive played a lot for over 3 years in every gamemode and I have never once gotten a single precursor drop from any source. At the same time I have known people who have been able to forge dozens literally dozens some over 100 precursors, one person got a precursor their first week. Meanwhile I am still at 0 because of RNG in over 3 years, so you will excuse me for not believing you.

Go to the TP. Buy 10000 level 75+ exotic weapons. Throw them all into MF. You will get your precursors.

Ragnarox.9601:

I’ll give you todays example:

Bought rare greatswords worth 120 gold. Threw them in MF just to test out my luck after long time.
Got 12 exotics
Got Dusk

But I am not happy with exotic drops.

Gz!

120 gold is ~240 greatswords, expected number of exotics (based on the ~20% chance): 15
You got: 13 (12 + Dusk)

That is barely under the expected amount. Write down the number of attempts from today and the number of exotics you get. After a few weeks or months you will have enough data to compare your results to others.

Kane.6549:

My wife has been coding games for 18 years and she has the most insane RNG I’ve ever seen on every game. She swears by secret modifiers and can usually sense within the first few minutes of character creation if the account is “lucky” or not. She’s gotten several precursers in the mystic forge, using various methods that would look like superstition to any sane person, but it just keeps working. She calls the phenomenon quantum interaction and described something about attitude, and syncing up the “mood of the code.” She’s gone to elaborate lengths to accomplish some seemingly impossible tasks in games using sheer “luck,” and has it down to a pretty finite science, at least as far as her accounts are concerned. I’ve watched her get the best drops first try every time on some toons that she deemed “super lucky” and other ones where she forgot to do her luck experimenting she has literally deleted them just for their invisible unlucky factor.

So… can confirm. There is a secret luck factor. She swears it isn’t in the coding, however, and there isn’t anything you can do except delete the unlucky toons and make new ones. It’s not a seed, it’s a combination of factors that affect each character made. You try a few random activities out specifically for “luck sensing” at the beginning of the account and will eventually be able to tell which ones are lucky and which ones aren’t.

Does she use Lucky White Rabbit’s Foot to get precursors? Lucky Pink Rabbit’s Foot is also good and it is cheaper.

People would buy multiple accounts to avoid any limitation.

Ragnarox.9601:

I have 4k hours on my acc and got 0 precursors by normal way.
Got 25+ precursors in Mystic toilet.

What I have experienced is that mystic toilet get buffs on Easter and Christmas time cause I get 2,3x times more exotics when I put rares in it.
In normal time I rarely get exotics in MF using rares.

So yea they are maybe manipulating drop rates. Some new accounts have more luck than veteran accounts that are made 3 years ago (like mine). 5%-10% chance more base to finding precursors is a big deal.

I get exotic maybe 1 per month in some loot bag. Guess I have unlucky acc for looting.

Please tell us exact numbers and the sample size.

“2,3x times more exotics”
“rarely get exotics”

If you want to prove something these are not enough.

The golem OVR-9000

Bomber.3872:

I see, np with that^^ Well you should have written some more text in your initial post
Something like ‘ecto price is currently on a high spike, sell some now to get good gold’, because like you see in this thread me and some others thought you tried pointing out a trend or something ‘strange on tp’.

Yes, you are right, but I was busy salvaging items

Baconomics.8674:

It would be nice, but it would wreck havoc with prices

I agree. Anet could add a cost for repeating, something based on the recipe you want to repeat. For example: t5 → t6 material upgrade: 2s, core → lodestone: 5s etc.

What about this? 15s buy order for a masterwork earring. You can craft it from 8s. Also he is buying huge amount multiple times.

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/13442-Chrysocola-Mithril-Earring

Same happened with the ring, but it seems he likes earrings now.

TPMN.1483:

It’s funny alt accounts for people…-)

These amounts of gold are nothing for some people – trust me

I know that it is possible to make 20k gold in a month easily, but I have a job and a life and I cannot sit in front of the trading post 24/7.

PyrateSilly.4710:

This one you also started …. and you always seem to comment on others about the TP and things “dropping” in price or “Oh look ‘someone’ just bought 1000’s this morning … what is going on” stuff. One could almost believe that you post just to try to drive the TP just so you could maybe make more gold.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thick-leather-price-manipulation/first#post6006492

I am interested in virtual economies and I like to discuss it, because I have enough knowledge of this topic. I also like to talk about crafting. I don’t discuss spvp or raids, because I know very little about those.

Bomber.3872:

Sry, but that’s nothing special. Check the ecto history, between december and now there have been at least 5 (20k – 50k ectos insta sold) of this spikes (usually after weekends).

There are hundrets if possible reasons how/why this happens to ectos and no the price never took a long change (lasting longer than some minutes).

This post is not about trends. It was a one time opportunity to sell some ectos before price went back to normal.

When I saw it I bought hundreds of rare chest armors (https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/1829-Shamans-Rogue-Coat-of-the-Grove I hope you can see it) and salvaged them as fast as I could. I managed to sell a few hundred ectos before the price started to decrease. I still have some on the tp that I couldn’t sell in time, but it is no problem, someone will buy them when the next spike comes

Ayrilana.1396:

I take it that you must have bought a bunch and now you’re hoping to drive up prices? Seems like a rather big coincidence that just as you post, supply and prices change.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have enough gold to buy 88k ectos.

Someone (or some players) bought a lot of ectos this morning. I attached the chart of the price/supply in case you do not believe me (also available here: https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/19721-Glob-of-Ectoplasm).

Price is above kitten , supply is really low. The market needs more ectos.

And… almost 50s now.

World completion will be a few days if you play 4+ hours each day. You can do SW chestfarm to get obsidian shards and gold. Dungeon is pretty easy, do at least 2 paths every day to get the tokens. Farm gold and buy the precursor if you want to hurry.

You can complete collections and buy minis.

Neural.1824:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Curo.2483:

I feel like so many people have been trained to just spit out the same answers that they take as fact, and don’t consider the fact that perhaps the drop system is flawed. Why can’t you even consider that? Do you really think ANet is so incapable of making a flawed system, that you ignore the evidence in front of you?

I’m perfectly willing to consider the possibility that there’s an issue, just as soon as someone meets my impossible standards

Fixed that for you.

Those are not impossible standards. You cannot prove anything without collecting enough data.

Personally I have 5 excel spreadsheets with tons of data. I would create a “kitten rng” thread if there was something wrong.

Sinope.5630:

I think this is only basic RNG what I have had with these accounts. But I have named them with “lucky” accounts and “bad luck” accounts.

Your sample size is 696, not bad but still seems to be too few. If I am correct you have got 32 boxes. It means you have ~4.6% chance to get one in 1 round (not sure what you mean by round as it seems you can get multiple boxes from 1 round, but I just want to show you chances).

There is 30.8% chance that you won’t get any box from 25 rounds.
There is 9.5% chance that you won’t get any box from 50 rounds.
There is 0.9% chance that you won’t get any box from 100 rounds.

None of these are unbelievable.

I would like to add this, some science

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2ecb9z/i_opened_10k_champion_chests_for_science/

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

As people already noticed, a computer can not generate a true random-generator, the pharses about “luck” are not that true. The system tries to be as close as possible, whatever that means.

“Anyone who considers arithmetic methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” – John von Neumann, 1951

If you really care about true randomness you can use this:

http://www.idquantique.com/random-number-generation/quantis-random-number-generator/

Curo.2483:

Whether or not you want to face the truth of it, your lucky friend is going to continuously be lucky. He’ll keep on getting the better drops, and you’ll keep using “random chance” to explain it, even though you can predict reliably that it’s going to happen. The odds of one person winning a coin flip 100 times in a row (starting from the first flip) are astronomical, so how is it that we see that happen so often? Perhaps with a pool of 10,000 people, you could say I only notice the outliers. However in my small circle of 30 people in my guild, why are the outcomes of these drops so kitten predictable?

You should record every single attempt when you do something where rng is involved. Of course you have to choose something where there are no “magical” things like MF and DR. Let’s say you make rare weapons from level 75-80 masterwork weapons in the mystic forge where the chance of promotion is 20%.

You expect to get 1 rare from every 5 attemps. But the reality is that sometimes all 5 will be rare and more often none of them. Sometimes you will have 20+ attempts without a single rare. If your sample is big enough you can even see 30+ attempts without a single rare.

Try it, make 5000 attempts. Record them all in an excel spreadsheet. You will be really close to 20%. Ask your lucky friends to do the same and compare your results.

Another question:

Someone (or some people) has just bought 12k Mystic Coins. Supply was 28k, now 16k.

Was it speculation or manipulation? (You can check its own thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Discussing-Mystic-Coins/first)

Edit: it was 15k and supply went from 31k to 16k.

Mosferre.1246:

So just wondering here, how much bank space would you need to store this volume?

0 if you don’t pick them up. Of course you won’t be able to trade anything else on that account.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m not calling it manipulation simply because the price didn’t really significantly change and anyone in their right mind, who has that much gold, would not try to corner items like thick leather.

Manipulation is where someone tries to influence market prices in a way to profit/gain from it. If I were to go now on the TP and buy up all of the low supply miniatures from sets 1-3, and then turn around to sell them at a marked up price, that would be manipulation.

Speculation is just making an investment on something which you believe will provide you profit, or larger gains, in the future. Buying up a lot of leather because you feel that their value may go up in the future is speculation. It’s like if I were to have bought up all of the silk scraps when ascended weapons were released. I wouldn’t be doing that to manipulate the market but to instead invest in the scraps in hopes that their value would go up with ascended armor crafting.

So, if I am right: speculation → when you have no control over supply; manipulation → where supply is really low or you can control it (because you are anet).

I think my idea of manipulation is not the same as yours. I would like to tell the difference between manipulation and speculation in my opinion:

- Speculation is when you sell, not sell or buy something, waiting for a price change. Every investment you make is a speculation.
- Manipulation is when you greatly (try to) distort the market. For example when anet makes a new patch and there are new recipes that create huge demand for some items. Or when you buy 90% of the available supply to artifically raise the price. Or when you make false information about future changes to change price.

Maybe these are not precise definitions, I will appreciate if someone tells me the real difference.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Someone? Or some people? Why does it have to be sinister? I’ve definitely purchased in bulk when I see supply for something go below a certain threshhold, when I see an ANet employee post about an upcoming change, when I start running short on something (and realize it’s because the sources are less than my demand), and so on. Yet another possibility is that people are finding they are running out of leather and taking their listings down (something else I’ve done more than once).

Periodically, markets move “suddenly” because a lot of people come to the same realizations at roughly the same time. That movement itself inspires (or fears others) into action.

tl;dr a drop in supply (suddenly or otherwise) by itself doesn’t mean manipulation by a single person or even a consortium

This is why I asked a question, because I don’t know why this happened. 90% of the supply has gone in 2 hours, from 2.8 million to 300k. It is a record low supply in the past 3 years.

I doubt that a lot of people are checking thick leather price and supply 24/7. Most of these stacks were on the tp for months or even years, because price was lower than 1.9s before this.

Jaxom.7310:

thats not price manipulation, its just like any market investment.

someone saw that there was about 50k or 500k i don’t remember leathers at like 1.55s. thats the last “price wall” next closest is like 5k selling at 5s, then the supply really drops and prices go up quick.

so someone saw this opportunity, spent the up front golds, and is preparing for the prices to go up to 5s and beyond. then they’ll start putting them back on the market at the prices that are more appropriate for how much leather everyone is buying these days.

they will likely be rewarded for their investment.

It is a really risky investment, putting 50k gold into 1 item. My biggest problem with this speculation is that people have stacks of thick leather in their banks, and it is really easy to farm them. But who knows?

Obtena.7952:

Unless I’m reading the chart wrong, the ‘manipulation’ failed spectacularly.

The chart is from here, you can check it:

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/19729-Thick-Leather-Section

As you can see, someone bought 2.5 million thick leather sections in less than 2 hours. Any ideas?

Mystic coin supply is almost 30k now and price is decreasing slowly. I think people saw the good price and started to sell their stacks. What do you think will happen in the next few weeks?

Brilliant jewels are still cheap (1.3-2s), so I don’t think that they will be needed. The other ingredient to make these is mithril ore. So I have no idea what happened with these amulets

If you look at the masterwork amulet topic and the sudden increase of mystic coin price… it makes you think… maybe there will be a recipe to convert brilliant jewels into mystic coins… or people are just speculating as always

I also noticed it:

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/tp/search?rarity=Masterwork&type=Trinket&sub-type=Amulet&level-min=75&sort=sell&ipg=25&page=1&order=asc

You can see the massive 10s buy orders for the mithril amulets, also you can see this with rings and earrings. Currently brilliant jewels are useless, maybe there will be a new recipe that will need those in big numbers.

Yes, however it is cheaper to buy it, for example:

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/15568-Mighty-Bronze-Greatsword

It seems that the price of incandescent dust is decreasing, the maximum buy order is 4.36s now. That means you can craft 1 orb from 26s.

Day Trooper.3605:

Milkshake.4038:

On the other hand if you watch closely: Nevermore crafting cost estimate uses Copper Doubloon with a 35s buy price and it is not the best idea, because you can make orbs/crests for 23s, so the price of 250 gemstones is 560g, not 840g.

How do you craft them for 23s? I thought it was more like 30s since the 5 dust is around 25s and then the 2 crystals are around another 5s.

Do you mean mystic forging them?

Yes.

Bomber.3872:

That’s the difference^^ Most of the people here that write their kittens about how good the expensive legy’s are and how easy they are to get are (beside some elites that bought early and are special snowflakes) all people that don’t have any idea about legendary’s and precursors crafting. I don’t know why some people even post here, it’s hard to argue with people that have no idea how the game works.

But I’m happy to help! The price range of500-2000g can anyone check. If you are terrible at math (your 100g example shows that), check any legy building website. For example https://gw2efficiency.com/
Now check how much nevermore costs you to build! Currently: 2.666g (raising on a daily basis because of this kitten gemstones), then check bifrost (= legy staff too) -> ~1.820g
If you want to check against other legy’s, twilight -> 1.569g, take something more extreme, kraitkin = 1.032g!
(Yes I agree you can’t really compare it to kraitkin, because it’s crap. That’s why I wrote 500g (which was 100g less the nevermore – bifrost difference at the time I wrote) and up to 2.000g

Most important thing here is the new legendary have a stable price! The only thing raising daily for around 50g are the gemstones! That is the only item totally wrong with the new collections because it raises the price indefinitly! Whoever doesn’t see this currently, please don’t post anything kitten and just go first on any webside (reddit, wiki) and first check some facts and how the whole situation is currently!

It does matter how you compare these costs.

For example if you choose to buy The Legend (with buy order) at gw2efficiency, the price will go up to 2032g.

On the other hand if you watch closely: Nevermore crafting cost estimate uses Copper Doubloon with a 35s buy price and it is not the best idea, because you can make orbs/crests for 23s, so the price of 250 gemstones is 560g, not 840g.

But anyway, you are right, new legendaries are more expensive.

PS: 2666-1820-100 is not 500

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I might. Although with my luck, about the time I clean them out, they’ll announce Jeweler 500. XD

Be more optimistic

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So….what I’m hearing from this thread (and a couple others I’ve browsed on this specific topic) is that I should finally do something with these?

Yes, you can sell them to make a nice profit or you can wait (maybe price will still go up, maybe not).

My eyes hurt. My fingers hurt. I made a small experiment to provide you enough data.

I bought a lot of crystals and a few stacks of hidden trove. I put them all into the MF and here is the result:

- 67 minutes of clicking
- 990 attempts
- 327 promotions to orb/crest (33.03%, it is somehere between 30-35%, I would need 10x more attempts to get a more precise chance)
- a lot of pain
- about 50g profit (could have been 59g, but I sell orbs and gemstones as well, I didn’t want to commit myself to gemstones and orbs are sold faster, btw I am still selling some gemstones, please do not undercut )

Takoyakii.2146:

Complete rng. There is a chance to tier up the crystal/medallion to orb crest. If you have a bad luck you will lose the money more than using jeweler.

So I recommend that only use medallion for this //or azurite crystal from fractal.. not sure that thing cost a lot more than normal crystal or not.

If you are not sure about it then go and test it with a sample that is big enough. You don’t have to trust me, the wiki or other gw2 sites, you have to trust your own results.

I think less people are doing it because it requires thousands of mouse clicks, crafting is more convenient.

Rizekurohi.4398:

l understand you’re trying to help but your information is a little off, It’s a minuscule amount you save doing this because you need incandescent dust which comes in about 5 silver each(you need 5 of them on top of 2 crystals of your choice). And that this process isn’t done through the mytic forge at all, It is transmog’d by d jeweler!

I was talking about putting 4 of them into the MF. I agree that the crafting upgrade is more expensive because of the incandescent dust.

It is cheaper to upgrade crystals in the MF. And you get a lot of crystals when you collect mithril ore and elder wood. Or you can just create a buy order, they are between 1.9-2s now.

I always do this:

Minor → NPC vendor
Major→ Mystic Forge or NPC vendor if I don’t have 4
Superior → Trading Post or NPC vendor

I used to craft thousands of major runes when cores and thick leather were cheap and superior rune prices were good. If it is profitable people will craft them again.

I would like to add a few thougths, you mentioned almost everything, it was fun to read it all

As I see, everything you do ingame has a gold/hour rate. RNG doesn’t count, because if you know the chances you can calculate your income. Of course your knowledge is important here.

You can do the best gold/hour activities (level 40 fractals, SW chest farm, in the past tunnel farm and keyfarm etc.), or you can do something you enjoy (WvW, creating backpacks, completing collections etc.). It is up to you, you decide what your goals are. This will greatly determine supply as DGraves mentioned it.

However it is possible to control supply, anet can nerf the best ways to farm something, they can reintroduce weapon skins in the gemstore, they can create new material/gold sinks like guild halls. Sometimes these only have a small effect, but they keep the market alive.

Just as soulbound items, they don’t change the market completely, but small effects add up and make a relatively healthy economy, where you are able to see trends, speculations etc.

DGraves.3720:

You can deconstruct ascended items now so that isn’t true. Furthermore accountbinding and soulbinding have different economic precedents. Soul binding means you have to buy 1 of each for all of 9, account means 1 and you’re done, but because there’s no net effect on the marketplace between either when considering maximum effectiveness soulbinding becomes frivolous.

Anet can see the playerbase better, if they make a change it has a good reason. They made ascended items and legendary weapons account bound in 2014, because they saw something and they wanted to react.

I don’t know much about ascended salvaging, but:

1. it has a cost
2. you will get account bound items: Ball of Dark Energy and Vision Crystals (Stabilizing Matrix is so rare and cheap that is has no impact)

DGraves.3720:

I disagree with this too.

The best gear (namely ascended rings) is account bound. You only need to build one set of ascended gear in any particular insignia so it is not in your best interest to work towards the greatest materials or most expensive materials since to change the armor or weapon all you need is an insignia of your choice.

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Legendary weapons further undermine this notion.

It doesn’t matter, account bound or soulbound items cannot go back to the market. Account bound items are a little help for casual players as they don’t have to grind to make multiple sets of ascended armor.

Zenith.6403:

Yes, I was so sure it would be one of those useless “are you sure you want to apply this upgrade to this item” messages and indeed just clicked yes without reading it carefully.

I honestly wonder what went through the designer’s mind when they made this kind of system. If the item is not soulbound in the first place, why would applying upgrade to it make it soulbound?

If you could sell a random weapon with a random sigil then there would be at least 500k different weapons on the trading post. My suggestion is to make them account bound and if you equip it with one of your characters then soulbound.

Mystic.5934:

however, there is a bug where it will sometimes glitch and think there is no recipe when really there is. usually works if you close and re-open the forge window, or maybe put the items in in a different order.

Bold part solves this problem, at least for me.