Guild Wars 2

This picture should sum up why I agree

This won’t happen. ANET deliberately chose not to include a trade window in GW2. Every single reason I’ve seen about why a trade window is a bad idea applies equally to COD mail. Even if the reason is wrong.

You say COD mail is to reduce the mail scam happening at the moment. True, COD mail would end that scam. However I’ve seen ANET staff claim that a trade window would open up the way for many other scams which would happen in far greater numbers. I’m not sure about the number of scams, but teaching people to avoid the single mail scam is much eaiser than teaching them to avoid all the scams that happened in GW1.

I’m an ex-Eve Online player. I don’t care about scams. But I still think a trade window/COD mail is a bad idea because I don’t want to see the trade spam that comes with it. To put it simply, GW2 has far less trade spam than any other MMO I’ve played, and the only explanation I can see is that with no trade window, there is no payoff to spamming. With no payoff, people don’t spam.

This won’t happen. ANET deliberately chose not to include a trade window in GW2. Every single reason I’ve seen about why a trade window is a bad idea applies equally to COD mail. Even if the reason is wrong.

You say COD mail is to reduce the mail scam happening at the moment. True, COD mail would end that scam. However I’ve seen ANET staff claim that a trade window would open up the way for many other scams which would happen in far greater numbers. I’m not sure about the number of scams, but teaching people to avoid the single mail scam is much eaiser than teaching them to avoid all the scams that happened in GW1.

I’m an ex-Eve Online player. I don’t care about scams. But I still think a trade window/COD mail is a bad idea because I don’t want to see the trade spam that comes with it. To put it simply, GW2 has far less trade spam than any other MMO I’ve played, and the only explanation I can see is that with no trade window, there is no payoff to spamming. With no payoff, people don’t spam.

Nuka Cola.8520:

its actually a smart design. what does agony make you buy if you’re going past lev40? revive orbs. where do you get those? on gem store and anet knew there would be tones of people going for high levels simply for challenge… not to say i like this **** especially when the only way to get revive orbs is on gem store and not craftable.

If you keep popping revive orbs, you’re not in it for the challenge. You’re in it for the loot, which is still profitable despite the gold* you’re spending on revive orbs.

*I doubt many people are spending cash to get the gems. Though encouraging gold→gem conversions is still profitable for ANET as it still encourages someone to buy the gems.

Rozbuska.5263:

Agony after lvl 40 can be handle by many way just by skills. For example I can with engineer lay down all meds from med kit (other classes can buy med kit as consumable), elite with another meds and healing turret, use heal twice (due to trait what recharge toolbelt skills on 25% HP. Yes I will be downed but nothing what Elixir R cant handle faster than Maw kill me:-)
Also Guardian with heal elite is great for that.

Could you provide a list of how every class can deal with that agony ?
That or admit that agony breaks class balance because some classes can’t deal with it.

Forcing some classes to buy a consumable, while others go without, is obvious balance breaking because ANET is punishing people for playing the wrong class by reducing their profit from the run. So that doesn’t count as a solution.

zombieheartsbrains.5830:

I don’t have too much of a problem with the way agony currently works. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gear gate, but for the most part it’s a minor one. It does force players to do the lower levels before doing the higher ones, which will be handy when it’s opened up later this month to let any level player join a group doing a much higher level fractal, which is fine. But…

ANET relaxing the level restrictions on fractals is just them admitting that the design of fractals had problems from the start. While also forcing players to engage in gear checks, because that’s the only way to keep out the players who lie about their agony resistance.
If the undodgeable agony hit early in the fractals, the lies would become obvious quickly. But since it doesn’t hit till the boss, and can be dodged till the jade maw, the lying players waste more of everyone’s time. So players will do what they can to catch them early.

Most things in this game can be gotten with tokens, and not that many; Fractals is different. 15 AR is easy, but the items needed to infuse a ring are account bound and random drops, and I have been having some rotten luck. I have a TON of tokens, and I really wish I could just buy the materials I need.

Bind on pickup, the other piece FOTM designed purely to keep people repeating content they don’t like, just so they can get to the parts they want to play.

I have several problems with agony:

- It comes on suddenly, then vanishes suddenly when you get AR gear. At fractals 10 with 0 AR it’s the most important enemy damage to ignore. Then I lucked out and got one ring drop on the same run as my 10th prestine relic. So I went straight to 10AR, and can basically ignore agony in level 10 runs. So the fractals aren’t getting harder with more agony, the sudden increases and decreases feel more like “you must have this much AR to continue”. So it’s just a gear check, nothing more. Especially the undogeable Agony attacks, as undogeable means that gear is the only way to survive, your skill means nothing.

- Agony only hits at the end of each fractal. So if you have a player who doesn’t pass the gear check, you don’t find out till you have wasted a lot of your time. Even worse is the jade maw because, if you have a player who dodges all the agony attacks, you don’t know their AR is too low until the undodgable gear check comes along after you have completed the other fractals.

- It punishes you for having a higher HP. Because a higher hp means you’ll take more damage, meaning you have to heal more to recover. Which means an item with stats x/y/vitality will be worse vs agony than an item with only stats x/y, even though it has the same numbers on stats x and y. When talking condition damage vs toughness, toughness just means nothing. Condition damage doesn’t punish you for having high toughness.

- Some classes get hit worse than others by design. Necromancers have a higher base HP, so they take more damage than a low hp class. Necromancers and guardians also have vitality and healing power on the same trait line, so they can’t increase one without the other. Other classes have healing and vitality on separate trait lines, so they can reduce the effects of agony much more effectively by increasing healing without making agony hit harder by increasing HP.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

van.5367:

The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.

No. They didn’t get banned for any specific step in the cycle. They got banned for repeatedly running the entire ecto generating cycle.

So you can simply avoid being banned for this by never using any of the output of a salvage to produce the item you just salvaged.

People who craft rare items to gamble at salvaging them for ecto will end up with both ecto and a small amount of the original materials used to make the rare item.

Are you advocating that those who roll roll their fabric or metal scraps back into another batch are “exploiting”?

Only if they get more of that material back than they put in. If they get back less, it’s fine.

TooBloodyBad.8904:

I don’t think that the stat difference provided by the addition of Ascended gear will make that large of a difference in WvW. A well skilled player is much better than a well geared player after all.

It doesn’t matter how small the difference is. What matters is that, by introducing FOTM-only Ascended gear, ANET has made the balance of WvW worse by dividing the players into two groups:
– Those that grind FOTM
– Those that don’t. Which includes the pure WvW players.

If we didn’t have FOTM-only Ascended gear both groups would be balanced because their stats would be identical. Making things identical is the simplest way to balance things. Even 1 point of a difference in 1 stat makes the group with the higher stat overpowered. Slightly overpowered is still overpowered.

All we are asking is for ANET to balance WvW so that pure WvW players are put on equal footing with everyone else.

Tarvok.4206:

I’ve wondered if maybe it was added to gum up bots. It’s pretty irregular, and would make it more difficult to automate the buying and selling process.

How does it make anything more difficult for the bots ?

All it does is make the bot have to hit sell again when the error happens. In fact, if the bot is simple enough, it wouldn’t even notice the error because it’s only looking for the ok button, not the text above the button.

If anything, it encourages bots because a bot lets you go AFK while the bot handles the menial task of hitting the sell button till the item sells.

Bots are there to remove menial tasks. Adding more menial tasks, like this error does, only encourages more people to start botting. So if this was intended as an anti-bot measure, then whoever proposed it clearly doesn’t understand why people bot.

van.5367:

The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.

No. They didn’t get banned for any specific step in the cycle. They got banned for repeatedly running the entire ecto generating cycle.

So you can simply avoid being banned for this by never using any of the output of a salvage to produce the item you just salvaged.

You know the worst part about all this ?

Had they made Ascended gear and components tradeable from day 1 it would have been obtainable everywhere you earn gold. Instead, they decided to nerf all players who didn’t run FOTM.

Zid.4196:

The question is not “what” or “why”, but “who”; and ANet has decided that the buy order costs nothing and the seller pays both the listing fee and the sale tax.

Who pays the tax isn’t important. If the share of the tax each person paid, while keeping the total percentage the same, prices would just shift so the same amount comes out of the buyers wallet, the same amount goes into the sellers and the tax take remains unchanged except in rounded amounts.

The important thing is that the tax is the only goldsink that can stop long term inflation, as it’s the only gold sink that takes more as prices rise*. Which means that any way to avoid the goldsink is bad for the economy.

*Meaning that if incomes remain the same, inflation will just lead to a point where the tax is sinking more gold per hour than is being created. Thus inflation gets reversed for a while, until the TP isn’t sinking enough. Then you have a cycle of inflation and deflation around a point.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each ring is unique. Anything with the “unique” description on it means that you can only equip one of those things on a character.

How are you expecting players to figure that out without buying two of the same ring ?
If the answer is ‘ask another player’ or ‘use some out of game guide’, then it’s also an admission that you haven’t adequately explained it in game.

What does having this ‘unique’ quality add to GW2 ?
Beyond the obvious of increasing grind by making people have to spend even more to get the same stats in the infusion on both rings.

Come to think of it, upgrading the rings to an infused version while also letting us stick an upgrade called into an infusion is also confusing in conversation.

Rising Dusk.2408:

While I don’t disagree, having “You can only equip one of this item per character” in the item description is unwieldy, lengthy, and cumbersome.

Then ANET has three good choices:
– Find a name that describes the effect in a better way. May not be possible.
– Put the unwieldy description in.
– Ditch the mechanic.

Having a shorthand term for it is important. It is just like the term ‘Soulbound’.

Soulbound would be better worded as “customized for {character name}” like they did in GW1. Or maybe "Soulbound to "{character name}.

Though Soulbound is also something that turns up at low levels, so players can learn it early for minimal cost. Unlike Unique which only turns up with really expensive gear.

Malzeth.2168:

WHOA! No, Just no. You are NOT going to play Anet for your inability to comprehend a word. It’s there, “Unique”. If you don’t know what a word means, dictionary.com and look it up for the definition. You can’t blame a company for your inability to read….. We expect people in the year 2012(3) to be able to read, that is what is expected.

When I think of the word Unique in regards to MMOs, I think of Diablo 2 where it just meant really rare. Or GW1 where it also referred to rare weaponry that only ever came with one specific stat combination and couldn’t take upgrades. MMOs are already full of very bizarre terminology*, so assuming that unique was referring to rarity would just be the player assuming consistency.

*For example, the other day I had a player who wanted me to get into melee range of a boss. So he just kept telling me to “Stack on the boss”. As a condition necro, I was already stacking bleeds onto the boss, so I had no clue he was even talking to me till he mentioned my character name.
Or the word ‘mob’. Outside of video games I most often see it used in reference to groups like the mafia. Inside video games it refers to a single NPC.

Wizardauz.3761:

Anet isnt responsible for your not telling you in unique when its stated clearly on the item.

If it says something like “unique” something that cant be found on any other item… Evar. I wonder what it could possible mean…

It was noticeable if you bothered to stop and look. They cant be held responsible for your mistake made in haste.

I’d expect them to use something close to the definition they used in GW1

A unique item, also known simply as a “unique” or as a “green item” for its color in the inventory, is an item considered special and difficult to obtain. Most uniques are weapons, shields, or focus items, usually named after and dropped by a specific boss. Some unique items are drops from certain non-boss foes in specific areas, or rewards for finishing a campaign.

Unique weapons and focus items have the maximum possible values for their bonuses (except the Ogre-Slaying Knife and those from Shing Jea Island and Istan). They can be customized and identified, but neither upgraded nor salvaged (except Keiran’s Bow) nor dyed (except the Straw Effigy and the Traveler’s Bo Staff). Most of them, including all dropped items, have a merchant value of 35Gold before identification, while some others have no merchant value and cannot be sold to traders.

Given the names on the Ascended rings were a lot like the names of GW1 unique, why are we wrong for expecting ANET’s definitions to be consistent ?

About a month ago, ANET ran an AMA on reddit. They said this:

It is absolutely not intended that Ascended will make a discernible difference in WvW. However it is the certainly the perception. Again however we would have much preferred to have released Ascended Gear across the whole of the game than in one area.

Players in WvW will be able to acquire Ascended items within that area of the game soon.

“Soon”. That’s the last we heard about that. Still, ANET agrees with you.

If it’s working as intended, it should not be red text stating an error. It should be a message telling people that they are trying to sell stuff too fast, and how long they should wait to ensure they message doesn’t happen the next time they hit sell. Or maybe just delay how long the order takes to go through to slow people down without getting them to keep mashing the sell button.

I regularly get it when I’m selling stuff after a fractals run.

BiJay.9830:

Well, seems like multiple orders from the same user don’t have a particular order. But order from different users should follow the FIFO concept.

You know how the trading post says something like x for sale from y sellers ?

Each of my orders counts as a separate seller in there. Meaning that count can’t see that my orders are all mine. If that count can’t, why would another part of the trading post be able to ?

I was listing a lot of wool scraps on the trading post today. Then I looked at my sell order page and noticed this. Despite all the orders being to sell 250 wool scraps, I somehow have two orders which quantities below 250. Meaning that people were buying from one order then, once I placed a second, people started buying from that one before the first order was depleted.

How does this happen if the trading post is running a first in, first out, queue like I keep hearing it does ?

I’m making a Google Docs spreadsheet that pulls data from GW2. So far it works well if I manually enter the item ids. So I have some questions:
– Is there any way to get a list of all item ids in the GW2spidy database ? Or at least the highest ID number so I can kludge it.
Edit: I’ve solved this one myself by reading the GW2spidy API documentation, instead of just relying on the tutorial PDF.

- Is there any way to get google docs to separate the digits into gold/silver/copper ?
Having the silver digits in a different color to the rest would be sufficient.

- How exactly does the trading post round the fees ?
The listing fee is clearly done on the total price of your order, but I’m not sure about the direction (round up, down, or to nearest). I think the sales tax rounds each transaction, so I’ll only be able to calculate a worst case.

Finally: here is an interesting find. Completely useless to me, but still interesting to think about.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

What is your idea for combating botting while leaving the power trader to do his business un-hindered?

First of all, stop encouraging people to bot by forcing them to chose between repeating a menial action (entering an order) or having a bot do it. Thus less people will be frustrated enough by the stack limit and the unable to sell order that they go find/write a bot to get round the frustrations.
Then, because they aren’t encouraged by ANET to use a simple bot, that simple bot is no longer reducing their inhibitions against botting, or coming with extra features that they are tempted to use now they have the bot installed.

In short, the limits only encourage botting.

Esplen.3940:

Esrever.8613:

might as well put a capcha for trades above 250 and make it so stacks are much more.

…

Then bots would still buy in 250’s.

That would make the bots very obvious as they would have multiple identical orders of 250, while the human traders would do a single giant order. So a captcha sounds like the perfect solution.
Assuming ANET implements a captcha bots can’t read.

Max.4786:

No. it doesn’t harm TP performance. Here is why

There is a reason behind 250 stack limit. and it is a technical reason.

To store items, you need a number to represent the stack size.
To store this number, you need to allocate memory for it. (in database, network, computer ram, etc)
To store 256 unique value you need 8 bits, which is 1 Byte of data.

All this means is that there is a tradeoff between how much data needs to be stored and how much CPU activity is needed to handle the data changing. Well, there might be a tradeoff. Remember, the order has to store other data, and that data must be repeated if multiple identical orders exist.

Please run your example with someone listing 10,000 units of an item and compare space used between 40 250 unit orders and 1 10,000 unit order. Be sure to include space used for recording the price, ID of the person listing the order(s) and time the order was placed (which ANET does attempt to record).

Good idea. It’s been asked about before. Many times. Sadly, because there is nothing that anyone disagrees about, this thread will sink like the others.

During Wintersday prices are only going to drop as supply increases. After Wintersday those prices will start to rise again as the supply is exhausted. So it’s a safe, long term investment.

Catch it, it’s not the best way to invest your gold.

Stridix.4260:

Wow…hope that isn’t like a massive ban like the snowflake jewelery.
But guessing if u r using ur xp to trade in for gold I think that is legit.
Of course depending how much u value ur xp/gold ratio.

The snowflake exploit involved a production method that produced more ecto than you fed into it. Thus allowing you to use ecto to create more ecto, which you feed back into the start of the process. Now you have a runaway ecto production line.

As long as a production method produces, at most, the same number of an ingredient you feed it, you will be fine. Something which produces different materials produces 0 of the ingredients, so it’s fine.

PowerCat.5738:

I know the guys at http://www.gw2db.com/ hacked the dat file and are able to pull the files from it. Maybe email them?

I will do that. Or I’ll have to go poking around in the .dat myself (I’ve seen instructions on how to do that before)

Gaudrath.6725:

As a market trader, I actually find sites such as GWSpidy really annoying, not helpful. Because I know my way around the market I can find lucrative deals by myself… and then those same deals show up on sites like that and a gazillion wannabe tradelings immediately pricewar the margin into oblivion, like piranhas.

Life would actually be easier (and more fun) without crutches like that.

The standard truth of market traders is that if something profitable becomes public knowledge, it’s either going to require an investment beyond more people, or it won’t be profitable for long.

Hence why I’d like ANET to release tools to make flipping even easier, because they would kill the profitability of flipping.

Leablo.2651:

Risingashes.8694:

This entire post is just trying to make fun of the 1c thread.

The 1c thread makes fun of itself.

Threads like the 1c thread seem to be a side effect of the market system we are using. Eve Online uses the same system, and that had plenty of people complaining about the 0.01ISK undercutting. Guess what the smallest increment of the currency in Eve is.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

We all agree that the stack limits are annoying, but is there really a better way to combat botting?

How does the stack limit combat botting ?

What the stack limit does is ask players to perform one menial task repeatedly. Something bots are much better at than humans. Thus it encourages bots.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

I think that ArenaNet has a good system in place already. There isn’t really a need to change it.

The trading post running slower for everyone* because it’s having to do more processing because the limit means people just make multiple identical orders sounds like a good reason to me. That’s why I’m asking if it is the case.
My argument is simple:
– Every buy or sell order is a transaction on the TP database.
– The more transactions per second on a database, the slower it runs.
– Having a transaction with a large number is still a single transaction.
– The stack limit means that people are making tens, if not hundreds or thousands of transactions when, if the stack limit was removed, they would only make one.

*Is it just me, or has the “unable to sell” error on the TP been getting worse over time ?

If anything, the transaction limit only encourages bots. With the limit you have to chose between entering the details into the TP for every single order you make, or just telling a simple bot the price you want once and letting it handle all the orders.
With no stack limit, you would only have to enter the numbers in the trading post once. So no desire for a bot to automate placing orders. Thus less people deciding that, since they already have an order placing bot, going to a more complex bot (which will harm GW2 more if it spreads) isn’t much of a step.

shxd.8146:

Kaimick.5109:

yeah doesn’t fit a thief or a guardian. And why would a weapon have elite skills ?

Skills require weapons, so i tought about Elite skills which require the Scythe

Which elite skills currently in GW2 require specific weapons ?

Arken.3725:

Scythes fit Guardians perfectly. Look at the Dervish class. Very similar.

Indeed. What does the lore say about a link between Dervish and Guardian teachings ?

Keir Bhaltair.5197:

I might be wrong but I’m afraid that changing the stack sizes would require some heavy changes in the code. I presume that they’re using 1-byte unsigned integers to save those values, which gives access to the numbers 0-255, and doubling these numbers’ sizes would be kind of a big deal. So while this would certainly be a welcome change, I think it’s highly unlikely to be actually implemented.

Wouldn’t that make the stack limit 255, not 250 ?

It’s quite clear that ANET picked the 250 item limit for some other reason. They probably used 250 in GW2 because that’s what they used in GW1. But GW1 had other silly limits, like limiting how much gold you could carry, and thus how much gold you could trade at one time.

Retrospek.4583:

Honestly, I think the limit is there so that people can’t hoard tons of resources, and although I would like to see it increased to something like 1,024 stack size, I doubt they will anytime soon, as any extra can be stored in the regular bank (which is where they make money from gem buyers).

I’d say that the stack limit should be at least 1,850. Why 1,850 ?
Because that limit lets people save up enough fractal tokens to buy the components of an Ascended fractal capacitor while only using a single slot to store the tokens until I have enough. Not 8 slots as the 250 item limit requires.

PowerCat.5738:

All of the guild wars 2 files are in Gw2.dat, a gigantic file.

The sound probably takes up a gig, maybe a bit more?

I’d like something a bit more definite than an estimate. Preferably something from ANET or one of the GW2 players who know how to look inside GW2.dat.

Waffler.1257:

It’s called market manipulation, one way to make money off the TP. Someone with a lot of gold just purchases all the items available for a certain item type and they can set the price to whatever they want since they now have a monopoly over that item. Not very hard to do, but it won’t always work as most people are smart enough to know a ripoff price when they see it and will decide that it is cheaper to go gather the materials and craft the items themselves. This also leads to people selling their crafted items at an undercut price to the monopolist meaning the monopolist has to keep buying up everything to sell at his desired price point.

That’s what makes me think gold laundering. People won’t fall for it, they will just craft the leg pieces. Making it a good money laundering scheme because others won’t be caught up in it.

Not that other people being caught in it matters to the people laundering it, as it just means more gold making its way to the seller.

How much hard drive space do the sound files of GW2 take up ?

Knowing how much of that is taken up by dialog would also be helpful to know.

The only context for this question you are getting is that it’s relevant to a discussion on another forum.

SteepledHat.1345:

They shouldn’t be botting it. Are you saying people bot the TP? Guess Anet needs to start taking a hard look at DR on the TP.

I’m not saying that people bot the TP. Only that it seems like it would be very easy for them to do so.

Esrever.8613:

this would not effect bots. Bots have scripts to buy stacks as fast as possible in any way.

currently its not hard for a bot to make 10000 orders in 3 mins while a human would probably get bored and frustrated.

Exactly. But I’m not talking about how this would affect bots. I’m talking about how bots effect everyone else by making the TP have to process those 10,000 identical orders, when it would only have to process a single order if there was no stack limit.

Currently the stack limit is 250 items. Which means no order on the trading post can have more than 250 items in it. Which means power traders will make multiple identical orders. This seems like it would reduce TP performance for everyone.

The big thing I see is when a power trader decides to change the price on one of their items. If there was no stack size limit, it would be two transactions: One to cancel the order, another to make the new order at the different price. But with the stack limit they have to change the price on multiple stacks. Two stacks and they have doubled the amount of processing time devoted to the power trader. Three stacks is triple, etc. All of which means less processing time for everyone else.

Especially if they bot it, which seems like a trivial task.

Why would ANET need to buy GW2lfg to implement it in game ?

The database of people looking for a group is the easy part of a dungeon finder, and that’s all GW2lfg is. The tricky parts are integrating the database with GW2, and those parts are easier if ANET designs the database from scratch with the intention of integrating it, not try and kludge another one in.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

laharl.8435:

My point is, people are not going to want to do fractals far above their tier. Why would I want to put myself through a level 30 fractal just to get from tier 5 to tier 6? People keep thinking that all these tier 1’s ‘noobz’ are suddenly going to be wanting in their tier 30-40 groups. I just don’t see that happening. When I start putting my alt into fractals I’ll be looking for the quickest and easiest route to gaining levels.

For better drops.

From the article

Rewards from the fractal will be based on players’ personal reward level as long as the reward level is equal to or lower than the chosen fractal level.

But even though the loot won’t be better*, there will still be a perception of the rewards being better. That perception is enough to get a few people trying fractals far outside their capability. Which means PUGs will look for a way to keep those idiots out.

*How long till we see threads of people calling for the rewards to match the difficulty level ?

Also on a slightly related note: this will make odd numbered fractals (1/3/5/7/9) completely pointless as no one will run them.

Another problem that ANETs solution has that a dungeon finder wouldn’t have.

I am one of the people that undercuts the lowest seller by 1c in almost all cases. How does agreeing to your proposal benefit me ?

I can see how getting a large number of people to agree would benefit me if I don’t agree to it. So I wish you luck.

As I see it, if the only way to get the item is to rely on the RNG, then bind on acquisition is unacceptable. So either make them tradeable, or provide a non-random way to acquire them.

Meia.6907:

I’ve been doing everything by hand so far, too lazy to actually create an excel formula. Now that i have your document, I can actually keep track of what I do. Thank you so much.

Now just really quick to answer to Snoring. I buy at 1c higher and sell 1c lower, for quick money and not too much risks, as I primary focus on resources that I know people will need. While most of the time, the gap is too small to actually make a profit, in which case, I do not invest, I happen to be making some good money with little effort. So I do not know if this what you call flipping, but it is a pretty good thing to do to make some coins ( so far without any loss).

If you’re buying on buy orders, then selling for a profit with sell orders then it’s what I’d call flipping. To move into price manipulation, you need to be buying out other players sell orders then reselling them at a higher price.

As for 1c above and below, that’s how I started. But I quickly noticed that the good I was playing with had a daily cycle of the price, so I’ve been trying to buy at the low point and resell at the high point. Which means pricing buy orders below the current highest, and sell orders above the current minimum. So far my main problem is that the buy price keeps staying above my buy orders, even as I raise them*. Still, the worst that’s happened so far is that my buy orders aren’t filling.

*Could be another flipper, could be some weekly cycle. One time was clearly someone engaging in price manipulation during what would be the low point of the daily cycle.

What is the problem that ANET is trying to solve by relaxing difficulty restrictions ?

My first thought is that they are trying to make it easier to find a group.

What alternative solutions exist ?
A dungeon finder is a common suggestion. GW2lfg finds me groups very quickly, a built in dungeon finder would be even better because:
– GW2lfg requires people to manually keep refreshing it. A built in dungeon finder requires no user input after the player starts searching.
– GW2lfg only gets the portion of the userbase that knows about it. A built in tool would get everyone.
– GW2lfg has the problem of people leaving their listings up after they have found a group. A built in tool can automatically remove them.

So I think a dungeon finder, which would also help with unpopular story modes of other dungeons, would be a much more effective fix.

Preventing items from being resold is going to cause problems for people who accidentally buy items they don’t want. But that’s not the only way to deal with flippers who buy with low buy orders, then sell with high sell orders.

One thing item flippers do is that they close the gap between the highest buy order and lowest sell order quicker than if you they didn’t exist. Closing that gap is good for everyone except the flippers. The more money invested in flipping a particular item, the quicker the gap closes and the less profit for everyone.

So if you want to get rid of flippers, you don’t make things harder for them. You make things easier. For example you write a tool like Charismatic Harm.9683 is using and provide it for free to everyone. Now watch the profit margins on flipping drop from all the casual flippers competing with each other now that they all have a program that points out the best items to flip.
As a bonus, you also keep the advantages that flippers provide to everyone else.

The price manipulators who make their money by buying out existing sell orders to temporarily drive the price up do cause some harm to the non power traders who buy during the manipulation. But a program that points out which items to manipulate is also going to ruin their day because they have to deal with competition from more manipulators.

Clark Skinner.4902:

How do you even have room in your inventory for 25,000 of an item?

The trading post has infinite storage in the pickup tab. So, once you have all your buy orders filled, you can go through cycles of hitting take all till your inventory is full, then selling the contents.

Though 25,000 of an item is exactly 100 stacks. 20 slot bags will get your inventory to 100 slots without having to buy extra bag slots.

I took this screenshot yesterday. The item had a vendor price of 1s98c, yet here is a sell order lower than that.

Here I thought that all sell orders below the allowed minimum had been removed.

As for why I have the trading post up in that battle, that’s because there is a spot in the cave where the shaman won’t attack people. So it’s a matter of sitting there and auto-attacking till he falls.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

That may have been ANET’s intent, but it is obviously not what they have actually produced. Any resources you put towards your ascended items is something you can’t put towards a Legendary, thus delaying the Legendary.

By that logic, anything you work on before your Legendary delays your Legendary.

Unless the item in question helps progress. For example, if Ascended items could then be used to craft a Legendary.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

What ANET intended is not important. Only that the current situation is horrible for players.

The only thing horrible here is the players’ interpretation of it, like the OP who refuses to drop any of those ascended items he’s found so far, wasting his own inventory space.

And the players who find that the RNG doesn’t drop the rings for them.

What ANet intended is totally important, you’re just choosing to ignore the other side of the situation.

Oh, and the current situation also goes against their stated intent for Ascended gear to be available outside of FOTM.

Did you even bother reading some of the other posts?
It’s stated that even ANet would have preferred adding it across the game, but that content clearly wasn’t ready yet. You’re just outright misinformed on this point.

It doesn’t seem like it would have taken much work for ANET to have made the Ascended items/components tradeable. Just remove the bind on pickup quality and let the trading post list them. Then their desire for the items to be available to non-FOTM players would be fulfilled because everyone earns gold.

Such a simple step that making them untradeable makes it look like it was intentional that ANET made them unavailable except through FOTM.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Really? What if he never helps in a fight and lets the group die so that he can run away? OP joins games and expect to be carried for free xp, gold and token. Is that fair to the other players? Why is OP insistant on getting a free ride?

If the problem was him not helping in fights, I don’t see them asking him to switch characters, since they would just expect him to run on whatever character he switched to. But if he’s fighting, but they are still losing, then I can see them asking him to switch to a stronger character.
Maybe not even a stronger character, but a more suitable one. For example, if the groups problem is that they can’t destroy condition immune objects in time, I’d expect them to ask anyone running a condition build to switch characters.

Allowing him to join shows that the party is willing to give him a chance. This contradicts OP’s claim that no one will run with him.

Agreed. Also I don’t think they disbanded because he was low level, I think they disbanded when they realized that they couldn’t complete the dungeon.

I’ve been in Fractals groups that have disbanded when they hit bits they couldn’t do. Those were all parties of full level 80s and the problem was that we didn’t know what we were doing, except the times when we stopped being a full party due to disconnects. Lower level characters were never a problem.

Cosplays.2937:

So you’re saying there is no story line to it! What a downer, that just ruined my day

Oh, it gets worse. The GW1 floating castle is clearly a different castle to the GW2 floating castle. Neither have been explained.

I’m just waiting for the Asura to crash Rata Sum into it.

DreamOfACure.4382:

They’re suppose to be a middle-step between exotics and legendaries.
Something for you to work on while you’re working your way up to a Legendary.

That may have been ANET’s intent, but it is obviously not what they have actually produced. Any resources you put towards your ascended items is something you can’t put towards a Legendary, thus delaying the Legendary.

They are intended to be worthless to anyone but you once looted.

What ANET intended is not important. Only that the current situation is horrible for players.

Oh, and the current situation also goes against their stated intent for Ascended gear to be available outside of FOTM.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

It’s two completely separate transactions. Neither are misleading. They just take a bit of simple math to figure out if you want to know what “their cut” is.

If it is not misleading, tell me how someone new to GW2 can find out that the total fee is 15% before making their first trade without asking another player or referring to out of game documentation.

When they see profit, they think income minus expenses, because that is the definition of profit*. They see the listing fee, an obvious expense, so assume it’s included in projected profit. The TP is misleading because it hides the fact that the simple math is needed.

*If you’re using something else for the TP, please tell us what it is and why you think it’s correct.

If you feel their cut is too high, too bad. The Trading Post is the only secure method to sell an item to another player.

Why do you even bring these points up ?
Why do you think I’m complaining about the tax being too high ?

Blueshield.6291:

TL;DR: The automatic buy order vs. vendor value protection system pretends that the 10% tax doesn’t exist, deceiving players and resulting in significant losses.

Yes, that is another misleading mechanic of the trading post.

Ravien.4823:

I only read the first few posts but I have to say one small thing:

As a cashier in a retail store in the same state and county as ArenaNet, I do NOT inform my customers that there is a 9.5% sales tax added on to all of their purchases, except some food, at my store. I simply tell them the total of their sale.

<snip>

It’s kind of the same with the trading post.

No it isn’t. When you tell your customers a price, you tell them the final price so they don’t have to do any further math, unless they care about the details.

The trading post doesn’t. When you list a sell order, to get your net income, you have to do further math. Even worse, the way the TP is set up, it implies that it includes the listing fee in projected profit and thus it implies that further math isn’t required.

Draygo.9473:

Its not misleading, it tells you exactly how much you will get after the transaction. There is no deception.

What definition of profit are you using that allows you to ignore a significant expense and still call the number you produced ‘profit’ ?

Ascended rings have two big problems right now:
– Despite being an item that is in high demand relative to their supply, they are vendor trash because they are bind on pickup.
– Ascended items are only available through FOTM. Even ANET acknowledges this as a problem in the AMA:

we would have much preferred to have released Ascended Gear across the whole of the game than in one area.

There is an easy solution to both: Make them tradeable. Not players who pick up a ring they can’t use will still be happy, because they see how much they can sell it for. Players who don’t like FOTM will be able to acquire the rings without ever having to step foot inside it.

Making them salvagable, or letting you exchange rings for other rings, only solves the first problem.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

It’s not deceptive. It’s not illegal. ALL of the information is listed RIGHT THERE on one screen….and it’s all right next to each other.

There is one crucial piece of information missing: That the projected profit doesn’t include all expenses. It leaves out the listing fee.
Profit is generally defined as income minus expenses. The listing fee is an expense. Therefore leaving it off makes the profit incorrect.

If someone new to GW2 ran the math, they would see that the projected profit takes 10% off the sale price. They would see the 5% listing fee. A reasonable assumption to them is that the listing fee is included and that there is another 5% fee somewhere for a total of 10%. Then they sell some items and find that the total is actually 15%.

That is how the trading post is misleading.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Warchiefomega.2738:

d the group disbanded mid dungeon because i refused to go on my lvl 80.

This bit stands out. Why did they wait until mid-dungeon to disband instead of telling you to switch characters at the start ?

Obviously they died a lot. Any guesses why OP wont share the reason?

Why there were dying isn’t that important. What is important is what they tried to do about it. It sounds like their suggestion was that the OP get on a stronger character, then when he refused they quit because they didn’t think they could complete the dungeon with the party they had.

The only thing I might do differently is that I might skip asking him to switch characters and go right to the abandon dungeon step.