Guild Wars 2

OP obviously hasn’t been looking at the t6 prices since the patch. The price of bloods has not doubled in the past few days. It’s been hovering from 25-30s.

The only T6 I can remember having a huge increase lately is armored scales.

Ooshi.8607:

They already started. Gold Wars 2 is subscription based.
But I do agree with you, as long as anyone can freely access it I think it’s fair game.

Time to report then :P

I think that these people are bright and that they spent their hard time programming the utility. However, they still are basing their work on Arenanet’s intellectual property and statistics and as such I think they are crossing the line.

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

So i thought a lot about this topic because it’s really interesting for me. I came to the conclusion that the gem conversion and the influnce conversion are major gold gold sinks!
If i take my gold and convert it to gems (which doesn’t give them to other players) and spend my gems on one of those cute quaggan bps i actually destroyed money didn’t i?

As of buying influnce for your guild. If i spend 2g on influnce for my guild i destroyed my own money aswell. It’s kinda unuseful because there’s nothing you would actually need it for but it might be a possibility :P

That gold is given to other players. But they do not receive all the gold that you had spent converting to gems, due to the tax, which is the gold sink.

The chances of someone solo’ing Lupi and then accidently inviting that player is very, very low, so I’m gonna keep on randomly inviting people to my farm runs. If they don’t want in, they can simply decline.

I have absolutely no problem with these programs, and I doubt Arenanet will have any problem with them.

When they start charging for their programs/services, then I’ll have a problem.

They don’t control the price of gems for gold. That is determined and fluctuates along with gems to gold.

Kam.8109:

Folk.2093:

Dont bother arguing in this forum, the economists sit here and vehemently defend their little wet dream of a TP. The average player can see the prices of many end game materials has been going up while the average earning income for players hasn’t gone up as much. But people aren’t going to care if they’re the ones making the money, I know several people in game who’ve made a descent ammount of gold, not one of them has done so without flipping items on the TP.

Gold supply is infinite. Players doing well… anything (quests, dungeons, world bosses, farming) make the game code produce gold. The amount of gold circulating in the game will constantly and forever be increasing. Inflation is a constant here.

And why is it such a surprise that players who take the time to invest (as opposed to spending or even saving gold) have more money? Do you think this shouldn’t be? That if I handle my money wisely, don’t go buying every dumb set of armor my heart desires, take the time to examine a market, take advantage of opportunities I spot… that I should have no more money than you, who (most likely) does nothing but spend?

To add to that, I’m always amused whenever we see news reports about how the wealth of the top 1% grow at a faster pace than the wealth of the average person. Or how the top CEOs have already made your salary in one day (we always see this in New Years papers)

It’s as if this is entirely surprising that a guy with millions in disposable cash can make safe investments and earn way more in interest when compared to the guy making minimum wage.

I always find it funny about these people, like that they somehow deserve the same amount of money that a CEO earns, or a billionare makes off of interest.

Unfortunately, this mentality is prevalent in this game as well. You have a good portion of players who work hard grinding and earning gold, or people who are smart enough to play the TP effectively through flipping or trading. Then you have the rest of the people who don’t like those who are earning more than they are, but are not willing to make those same sacrifices. Sure, some people are lucky, but that’s a small minority out of the already small minority of rich people.

Zogyark.4597:

Better yet, when are we getting another option for any other legendary weapon, I for one would like a different legendary staff, and also the ability to fuse 2 together for something similar like eternity.

I think they want to focus on improving the current legendaries first than introducing more.

All rares have same chance.

All exotics have same chance.

Comparing rares and exotics have different chances (the latter has higher)

The only unconfirmed combination is whether or not lvl 80 items have a higher chance than < lvl 80

SteepledHat.1345:

Vol.5241:

There is nothing wrong with the precursor rate. Go work for your items.

I think this guy got his first legendary in Dec. Lmao. Early adopters are so funny.

Noerknhar.3826:

I would be perfectly fine if the precursor was collectable by doing WvW, dungeons, map completion or what ever. Right now you can only get it by gambling or using the trading post. I won’t talk about the luck to get a precursor from one of the chests or mobs in the game, as this chance is like 0,00000000000001% or something.

No no no, you can get it from the forge, right now, for free! That’s why I’m almost 200g poorer than when I started this process.

No, I got my first legendary in November, another in December and another last month.

So your notion that I have legendaries simply because I got them early on won’t work here. I worked hard for all of mine, whether it was Bifrost at 140g or Sunrise at 400g, whether it was when prices were down or whether prices were up.

As far as I’m concerned, those who complain about precursors are people who want stuff handed to them and refuse to commit the time to get one. It also includes people who decide to gamble and then complain when things don’t go their way.

I’d figure you need about 400-600 hours in the game.

The big time factor that limits your legendary progress is the karma. Karma is pretty fixed and there is only so much karma you can farm in a day.

Unlikely, it’ll cause a lot of personal story problems.

Rares and exotics will never be vendored.
Blues are always vendored and would be a stupid waste to forge
Greens may be vendored and forged, but I suspect that forges happens very rarely, so that would not really be considered a gold sink.

So yes, while I do agree that destroying items in general removes potential gold from vendors, if those same people were not to destroy those items, they wouldn’t be vendoring them anyway. Rares/exotics would be put on the outpost. Greens/blues wouldn’t even be in the discussion since they are very rarely put in the forge.

This is tailored towards people who are either too lazy to merchant or have bags so full and want to sell asap.

or

they want to forge greens in hopes for a rare

Remember, a sink is something that removes the object in the economy and is accessed by no one.

Gold sinks in this game – outpost fee, siege from merchant, elonian wine, runestones and more

Items in this game – forge, soulbound/account bound items

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

I may be very wrong on this so please exlain me my fault but: Isn’t almost every item you buy and soulbind a gold sink???

If you for example buy a precursor, storm, you exchanged your gold for something that has a value of 150g. No complains there. It was a simple exchange. (Except for the listing fee of 15% nobody lost or gained something) But now by equipping it you make it soulbound and untradeable! You yourself just lost 150g. That’s how i see it.

The mystic forge is rather a lottery than a gold sink. You have chances to get items that inherit a greater value and chances that you get things with lower value. You either lose gold or gain gold, therefor i think you can’t overall call it a goldsink because chances are that you might earn gold.

Btw selling stuff to the vendor is neither creating nor destroying money. It’s a simple exchange. If you don’t sell them you still have the valie they’d be worth.

That’s how i think about it, please note that i don’t have an economics degree nor am i very into economics so mind me please^^

In your transaction, the gold sink is the outpost fee. That gold goes no where. It’s lost.

But the gold that you lost due to your purchase went to someone else. They now have the 150g minus the 15%. That gold is still in the game and still in the economy.

Your argument on the forge is incorrect – this has nothing to do with the value of gold that you could sell your items that you get from the forge.

Is the forge an item sink? Absolutely – an extremely effective one, more so than soulbound items. But it is nothing near a gold sink as it is.

Zegai.8256:

Vol.5241:

Actually Colin posted in that thread with an update. It’s not Arenanet’s fault that you fail to do your due diligence and read his response.

You’re right, there was one response, 10 days ago. I started only periodically checking that thread because it went ignored for so long. Nevertheless, the point is, it took 2 months to get that ‘one’ response, and all the response says is “we’ve found nothing wrong. It’s in your heads, x-files level of conspiracy. We’ll look into it…” They flat out said in patch notes that vets and champs will be guaranteed to drop loot, and they clearly don’t. Is that x-files conspiracy too?

I’m glad I waited 2 months for that, I feel so informed and relieved. All the frustrated players still making new threads on loot and DR and rewards can now be ignored. It’s obviously not an ongoing problem or anything.

Maybe you need to adjust your expectations? It takes time to collect the data, and you need large amounts of it. Ever heard of small sample size? Terrible to make conclusions on it.

HiddenNick.7206:

I was just wondering why there is no time limit for auctions? Other then server side optimizations.

There are few reasons to add such a limit with combination of listing price:
1. Removes trash from TP.
2. Informs people when they have overpriced something.
3. Removes your own pocket trash merchant.

I agree, when the game released I was amazed to see that there was no time limit. When you overload the outpost with this many items that accumulates over time, it’s bound to get slowed.

My theory is that they have the capability to, but they are holding off now until they feel the need to adjust the economy to include more gold sinks.

I can understand that, but that indirectly makes the forge a gold sink. There is no question the outpost is a gold sink in of itself, but the forge is not. Merely conducting transactions on the outpost act as a gold sink due to fees, while merely combining on the forge does not – that’s pretty much my main argument.

Actually Colin posted in that thread with an update. It’s not Arenanet’s fault that you fail to do your due diligence and read his response.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Vol.5241:

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Vol.5241:

Keep in mind that gold sinks are transactions that take gold out of the economy – not items..

Why not count items? Items = gold. You counted them as a source of gold, “There are thousands of players playing and vendoring their greens/blues..” If people are cranking items into the Forge trying for a precursor or just trying for upgrades, that’s removing potential “gold”, it’s vendor credit value, from the game.

Transactions that take items out of the game take gold out of the game. Or people salvaging and crafting depending on the vendor value of the original vs the product, there is probably usually a loss of “gold” or value. That’s a gold sink. Craft mats purchased from vendors are another gold sink, and training manuals, and retraining, I retrain about once every two weeks.

And harvesting tools, salvaging kits, food. This game has plenty of gold sinks.

The forge is not a gold sink.
Sure, if you make the argument that gold sink of items is the vendor price of them – but when you have something as valuable as T6 or rare items, no one in their right mind would vendor those. So items by themselves when you throw them in a forge are not gold sinks.

If you sell them on the outpost – sure – there is the BL fee that takes it’s 15% cut.

Forge is a gold sink. It is like a craps table or blackjack table in a casino. It is designed for the “house” to win out overtime. I am positive that the value of goods put into it versus the output is -eV.

The forge on a whole is not a gold sink. Sure, if you’re using wine to upconvert. But I assume you’re talking about gambling.

Explain to me how using the forge, aside from upconverting, removes gold out of the economy.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Vol.5241:

The forge is not a gold sink.
Sure, if you make the argument that gold sink of items is the vendor price of them – but when you have something as valuable as T6 or rare items, no one in their right mind would vendor those. So items by themselves when you throw them in a forge are not gold sinks.

If you sell them on the outpost – sure – there is the BL fee that takes it’s 15% cut.

Vol.5241:

The forge is not a gold sink.
Sure, if you make the argument that gold sink of items is the vendor price of them – but when you have something as valuable as T6 or rare items, no one in their right mind would vendor those. So items by themselves when you throw them in a forge are not gold sinks.

If you sell them on the outpost – sure – there is the BL fee that takes it’s 15% cut.

Two words, Elonian wine. Z’s gotta get his drink on. And nobody vendors t6 mats because they’re turning them into exotic greatswords and feeding them to Zommoros. Why do you think people are “vendoring greens and blues” <— (your words as to why we have gold in the game)? Because it doesn’t do any good to feed them to Z.

If they put a .00001% chance on greens and blues fed to Z kicking out a precursor do you think anybody would be vendoring them? Of course they wouldn’t they would feed him every single blue/green they could get their hands on. And that would take all that gold out of the game. Same as it does every time he eats a rare/exo.

Elonian wine is a specific item with certain uses. Yes, that item alone would be a gold sink, but I’m not talking about that. Cores are not a gold sink. T6 mats are not a gold sink. Throwing rares and exotics in the forge are not a gold sink. I think you are getting confused as to what is a gold sink and what is not.

Again Vape, these are normal occurences when server resets happen. I assume you’re new to the area.

Certain elementals only show up when a temple is uncontested. Debuffs also disappear. And nodes reset with server reset.
Nothing new here. Enough with the conspiracy theories

Sell everything except for t5 bloods. T6 bloods are going crazy expensive atm.

Anyone else on that server? I tried guesting in that area (Cursed Shore specifically), and after 30s-1minute, I get kicked out.

Also eerie that no events are being done, so I assume something is happening there.

CassieGold.7460:

Vol.5241:

I think this is something that John Smith looks at every day. Right now I can’t imagine how the gold sinks we have in this game are enough. There are thousands of players playing and vendoring their greens/blues, while only a handful actually utilizing the large gold sinks.

However, if you looked at the interview of Smith awhile back on economics and games, they did make a good point that you do not want to design a game that mimics real life too much because it’s not fun. So from that point of view I think having some inflation due to the lack of gold sinks is best for the game. But from a pure, no-fun standpoint, absolutely not!

I remember the interview, and the Sinks vs. Faucets discussion, but I think the coment you make about only a handful utilizing the large gold sinks rings true in a significant way.

And in no means do I think we need a required gold sink. I think armor repair, WP costs, and TP fees have that part of the sink system well covered.

What I think though is that the cosmetic rewards side of things is lacking in sinks….

8 Exotic Armor sets for tokens, 1 exotic set for Karma, 1 lvl 80 rare set per race for coin.

All t3 cultural weapons are karma

Exotic weapons for dungeon tokens.

While exotics can be crafted, and some people see this as a gold source of exotics, it is player driven, and not a true sink asside from the TP fee.

What kind of sinks would people like to see in the game in the sub 100g range? The sub 10g range?

Again, I’m all for cosmetic sinks, I just think the game is lacking in things to siphon money out of the economy.

Gamble chests. % chance to reward you globs, rares, exotics, skins, but most of the time reward you an item that vendors for less than what it costs to gamble.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Vol.5241:

Keep in mind that gold sinks are transactions that take gold out of the economy – not items..

Why not count items? Items = gold. You counted them as a source of gold, “There are thousands of players playing and vendoring their greens/blues..” If people are cranking items into the Forge trying for a precursor or just trying for upgrades, that’s removing potential “gold”, it’s vendor credit value, from the game.

Transactions that take items out of the game take gold out of the game. Or people salvaging and crafting depending on the vendor value of the original vs the product, there is probably usually a loss of “gold” or value. That’s a gold sink. Craft mats purchased from vendors are another gold sink, and training manuals, and retraining, I retrain about once every two weeks.

And harvesting tools, salvaging kits, food. This game has plenty of gold sinks.

The forge is not a gold sink.
Sure, if you make the argument that gold sink of items is the vendor price of them – but when you have something as valuable as T6 or rare items, no one in their right mind would vendor those. So items by themselves when you throw them in a forge are not gold sinks.

If you sell them on the outpost – sure – there is the BL fee that takes it’s 15% cut.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

I think there are enough gold sinks. Saving for a legendary is a pretty huge gold sink. I’ll be saving for a year+ before I can afford one. Gold sinks are going to affect players differently depending on the time they put into the game and where they spend that time. While 3s waypoint fees might be trivial to a dungeon grinder that puts in 4hrs a day, it’s not trivial to a pve’r who plays 4 hours a week.

I pve mostly, casually and I’m far from swimming in gold.

Keep in mind that gold sinks are transactions that take gold out of the economy – not items.

So the only gold sink for legendaries are the Icy Runestones, and that alone is not sufficient since not everyone is undertaking a legendary or have even reached point of buying the Runestones.

I think this is something that John Smith looks at every day. Right now I can’t imagine how the gold sinks we have in this game are enough. There are thousands of players playing and vendoring their greens/blues, while only a handful actually utilizing the large gold sinks.

However, if you looked at the interview of Smith awhile back on economics and games, they did make a good point that you do not want to design a game that mimics real life too much because it’s not fun. So from that point of view I think having some inflation due to the lack of gold sinks is best for the game. But from a pure, no-fun standpoint, absolutely not!

T6 prices and lodestones will go up when they release scavenger hunt, which I suspect (with no proof) will come out during or immediately after summer.

I should also expand on the inflation remark – even if they increased the price that the vendor buys your blue item from 50c to 2g, sure, you may think you are richer because you have a ton of gold in your inventory.

But everyone else in the game is richer as well. And so you’re really no better off.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

I will be honest. A good economy makes me want to play. WoW had a good economy depending on the server of course.

I am poor in real life. So why would I want to role play as poor? They need to increase the amount the vendors will buy stuff for. That is a huge problem for me. I know I am waiting to see if another MMO that is coming out will have a better Economy set up. I know the series so I do have a bit more faith in them for making a better Economic model. I know they are trying to get people to buy gems, but it makes me not want to even bother when they come out with an expansion.

You are poor because you don’t know how to make gold, not because of how the system is set up now.

If you ask for higher vendor prices, that increases inflation, meaning your buying power with whatever gold you have is lower than it was before inflation took place.

If I have 100g, and you consider that rich, and then we have inflation go up 100%, then suddenly I’m not so rich anymore. It’s all relative.

Rouven.7409:

The OP is not silly, he is simply noticing one of the key differences – in his example between the wow “economy” and the one here. Mind you that I don’t use “economy” as a technical term – you may replace it with “gold making mechanic”.

Other games reward you (in terms of gold) just by playing – with vendor trash drops (as well as daily quests). The amount you get from that usually pays for some of the NPC sold more expensive items. Here, in order to be rewarded with gold – you have to utilize the TP.

One question I always ask when I see comments like “I make 4-5G in a 30 min dungeon run” is if that includes sales of the dropped items on the TP. I never get an answer to that.

At the end of the day, the only value that gold has (for me) is NPC prices. I don’t expect that ratio to change and made my own peace with it for now.

Why – because from my point of view this all has to do in a way with the “just play” goal. I am not expected to “grind” or “farm”. This is not easy to convey or to balance.

But for myself the consequence is that I for the most part decide not to use the TP for certain things – I’d rather go grind them. This is my own decision based on my playstyle though which is not applicable in general. I can certainly see it working very fine for others and with recent changes going into the future – e.g. Tx mats for laurels.

In a nutshell – vendor trash won’t bring you very close to “higher” goals OP – sell items on the TP, check the prices first and don’t use the sell option out of the sell window right away. Sell most items that you don’t need anymore unless you think the price may go up in a time frame that you are comfortable with.

Selling your items on the outpost does not constitute ‘playing the TP’. Playing the TP means investing in items to speculate, or power trading items short-term.

I really don’t get the reluctance to use the outpost as if it were some black market

If you increase the value of gold that the vendor buys, then that just increases inflation.

There is nothing wrong with the precursor rate. Go work for your items.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

SteepledHat.1345:

Svarty.8019:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

DR should not effect fractals.

Affect*. You’re welcome

>.< Who cares?

As a representative of a company, I should care care to use proper affect and effect. It’s kind of like messing up with you’re and your…

double care!

Lexie.5894:

As an extremely causal gamer who has never played the market or traded on the BLTC, I find the idea of earning 500gp to 700gp “just playing” to be extremely reasonable.

I think I’m going to make 30 to 40 gold a month if I continue my causal play (10 or so hours a week, no guild, don’t read the wiki much), which means I could have the best item in the game after a year of very casual play. That’s insanely easy by MMO standards.

It’s also reasonable to assume gold generation scales. So the people who are playing 60 hours a week should be earning 180 to 240 gold a month, likely much more as I’m sure they are much more skilled and knowledgeable then me when it comes to gold generation.

Why can’t we have more people like you ;_;

Just another person possibly providing false information.

Until he provides a screenshot of the PM, don’t believe it.

Post the screenshot. Perhaps the CSR misunderstood your question.

I didn’t read, but you might want to remove ‘to the devs’ from the title – against the rules

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Something subtle, fitting, and aesthetically pleasing would be nice.

What if a glowing page fell out of the book and flew in the wind behind you every so often?

Nice idea, I’d love to see that.

Ursan.7846:

I feel you have a pretty different idea of what “difficult” is. Fighting dragons is not difficult. Nor is doing JPs, or killing champion mobs.

The most difficult content in this game currently are dungeons and fractals. They have many one-shot mechanics, as well as sequences which requires teamwork and coordination.

And players are well compensated for it, IMO.

Arah P4

shudders

Not sure if this belongs here or in Suggesitons, but the new Risen animations we had with the January patch does not apply to those in the Risen in story mode.

Minor bug, though.

“The bias of the economy development guys seems to be to pay everyone minimum wage, regardless of how difficult, how intelligent, or what the task the most you should be able to earn doing it is set. even worse, the most difficult, requiring knowledge skills, etc tasks tend to pay the least (barring high end fractals, maybe but im guessing it is still around 5g an hour there).”

The market is willing to pay you minimum wage if you refuse to put in the effort to work hard for your money.

Run one dungeon per day? Casually farm for 10 minutes? You won’t be rewarded as much as that guy who puts in 4 hours a day doing hardcore farming

Most efficient and cheaper to use cores to lodestones. shards are not good because you are wasting skill points and losing money since wine is fixed at 25s.

Do not farm cores/lodes. Farm other places and buy them.

Fortuna.7259:

Vol.5241:

The price is what the market is willing to pay

Which is what you see the buy orders at, or however much someone bought from the outpost from the lowest seller.

Absolutely nothing wrong with the price of precursors.

But something is wrong with the market. This is a game, after all.

There is nothing wrong when there are wealthy buyers out there who are willing to pay more for a luxurious item than what the average person is willing to pay.

Just remember that you need to buy the recipe on the character that has the craft profession. The recipes should be account bound but due to a bug they are not. Wasted 10g because of this.

The price is what the market is willing to pay

Which is what you see the buy orders at, or however much someone bought from the outpost from the lowest seller.

Absolutely nothing wrong with the price of precursors.

This would lead to lower prices since people would prefer to sell right away and not risk losing the selling fee.

Not sure why you are tying this to just precursors when this would impact all items on the outpost.

what’s the skin like? sellable?

Gems don’t vary enough day by day for people to speculate.

Best to wait for the next major sale and cash out immediately when you think it has peaked.