Guild Wars 2

Ah, i see my legacy is alive and well.

I used to use Nike Warrior though, as half the fun is getting as much enemies as possible to chase you. If you use thief, most stop chasing after a bit.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The crafting costs are generally the same for each component of any particular piece of gear, with these notable exceptions:

• Acquiring enough fulgurite to make the jeweled patches/dowels for HoT stats. No way around this one.

Fulgurite has a workaround as you dont need it for the exotic insignias and inscriptions, which is why i would rather craft a vanilla ascended set and then the exotic insignias with hot stats to swap to them.

its better not to make suggestions for different parts of the game in one thread because devs responsible for each part prbably wont read it because the title doesnt relate to their responsibilities.

Just put feedback for the gemstore into the sticky and make eperate threads for example home instance, loot tables etc.

What has the supply of zhaitaffy to do with the amount of able crafters anyways?

They reintroduced zhaitaffy as reward frequently in recent years from old and newer material eaters. Since then, new supply seems enough to cover demand for new starcakes, as I dont see recent price spikes, except since you opened this topic.

A we are blindly assuming things like millions of zhaitaffy being stored in imaginary vaults of players we dont know, I can only assume that you are an investor yourself that wants ot rise the price of zhaitaffy of starcakes and therefore opened this topic to create a panic.

Kapy.9387:

Once again, the problem is not whether those people made the biggest profit of their life, if it’s the deal of the century or not, it’s that people have to rely on those who can craft it and that they set the price – whether it’s a fair price or not. We have a shortage of this cake and the pieces of zhaitaffy required to craft it.

As a buyer, you can set your own price via a buy order. But as of now, people dont put in buy orders that cover the crafting costs and tp fees. For that, we would need buy orders to be at 2g, not less than 1.5g as we have them now.

If more people would have the recipe, you would have more people not crafting it because its unprofitable atm.

I wouldnt have bothered with this topic, if you all you wanted was Anet to reintroduce the recipe so you get to craft the starcake on your own. But instead you invent some bogus scenario of someone storing 1.5 million zhaitaffy somewhere in an empty cubby-hole on his account for 4 years.

Those 1.5 million zhaitaffy would have been enough to craft 75k starcakes, which would have been enough to provide a whopping 60 starcakes every day over the course of 4 years.

Chances are, that we simply have run out of the original bulk supply of the festival.

IIRC, I had bought around 10k zhaitaffy initially in early 2014 before we all thought the 2nd dragon bash festival will occur.

I dont think that I ever used them to craft starcakes. It was always more profitable for me to either sell the zhaitaffy directly or buy koi cakes from sonder the seller for it.

I ran out of zhaitaffy, when koi cakes went over the 10s mark in 2015 and I ued my last supplies to cash in on them.

Kapy.9387:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m confused. Why would more people having the recipe make it less costly to craft the item?

No one said that. That’s what Wanze was getting wrong all the time. The main problem is, that fewer people means, that those few people can influence the price a lot more. Those people who are storing the cakes and invested in them. As I pointed out in a post earlier, the cost of the cake increased once dramatically when there were only 174 units left. I also pointed out, that zhaitaffy (the main ingredient next to saffron) is also running short with only 60k units left, whereas 4,5 million were on the market once.
Anet would have to fix both or offer an alternative, else we’re going to have an oligopoly for the toptier bufffood for hybrid builds.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

who are those people that invested in them?

I am investing and trading since launch and I certainly dont have any starcakes left in my banks from dragon bash. That was over 3.5 years ago. You might think it would be a nice deal to have a couple of stacks of starcakes lying around somewhere that i got when they cost 30s.

But that was over 3 years ago. 30s back then was worth as much as 2-3g now and reflect the crafting costs of the materials at that time.

Kapy.9387:

Wanze.8410:

The highest buy order is 1.42g while it costs 1.60g to craft, so I dont see why I should start crafting these, if buyers arent even willing to cover crafting costs and tp fees for me.

You don’t get to craft these in the first place, my friend. That’s the point. People who craft that stuff can store them in abundance in their guild vault/bank and sell them whenever they feel like the profit is enough. Who knows how old that star cake is, when someone buys it?

Without any doubt, there’s going to be a hard limit what people would pay for a 30 minute bufffood. However, there’s no alternative to that food when it comes to maximizing hybrid builds and it’s not in your or my power to change that because the recipe is only available to very few people.

At this point, I’m quite certain that most of these cakes aren’t freshly crafted because that would – as you pointed out – mean a minus for the crafter. It’s quite likely that those who have the recipe ordered quite a huge amount of zhaitaffy, which would also explain why there are only 60k units left, whereas there were 4,5 million before.

Wanze.8410:

And if you would calibrate the gw2spidy graph to one year,

As you can see in the first sentence of my last post, I’m always using a full view to look at the progress over the years, not just one year.

Considering the price swings other food and ingredients are going through within a year, this is quite stable.

Most food seems to be stable and tied to the gold inflation. I checked three popular foods and couldn’t find anything concerning.
Plate of truffle steak(Power builds) http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/12467
Rare Veggie Pizza (Condition builds) http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/12464
Delicious Rice Ball (Healing builds) http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/68634

But that’s again missing the mark. Just because the price of a certain ingredient seems to be stable right now, doesn’t mean that we don’t have to worry about it. (I feel like I should make a reference to the overfishing of the seas in RL)
Almost every food in gw2 is on the trading post in abundance, but both the dragon’s revelry cake and the pieces of zhaitaffy are barely available anymore and it seems like people aren’t noticing. It’s hard to tell if we will ever run out of them, considering the low demand of bufffood for hybrid builds. What we can be sure of though, is that those players who have the recipe are a minority in gw2 and that they can charge whatever the hell they want just like they did on august 15, last year.

First of all, I have the recipe unlocked, so i get to craft whenever i want.

Second of all, I dont see any point in arguing with you about supply and demand, if you take the seasonal festival as a reference point for supply and fail to see the stable trend over the last year.

I dont know how you can argue that there is a supply shortage for an item that no one is willing to pay the crafting costs and tp fees for because quite clearly, there is no demand that would justify any iteration.

The highest buy order is 1.42g while it costs 1.60g to craft, so I dont see why I should start crafting these, if buyers arent even willing to cover crafting costs and tp fees for me.

And if you would calibrate the gw2spidy graph to one year, you would see zhaitaffy mostly being valued between 2-3s in the last 6 months. Considering the price swings other food and ingredients are going through within a year, this is quite stable.

Kapy.9387:

Wanze.8410:

The price of starcakes has nothing to do with the rarity of the recipe but the unusually high amount of ingredients needed to cook it.

I don’t think we can agree on this one.
Let me back up my opinion with some data. (Most of it checked on gw2 spidy)

Last year, in august we had a whopping price of 3.23g per cake. At the same time, the price for the ingredients have not changed at all. The most expensive ingredient -Saffron – was at a sell listing price of 3,90s per unit. It costs 3,89s at the moment.(19.02.2017).

However, what is extremly special about this specific date is the sell listing amount we had back then. Only 174 Dragon Cakes were on the trading post which clearly impacted on the price.

The problem is, that we can’t tell how long it will be ‘til we get the next shortage. Or what happens if the demand for the pieces of Zhaitaffy gets higher than the amount available. We had 4,5 million of them on the trading post for a time. Now we’re at just 60k. With only 3 options left to get them.
A) Generosity’s Reward
B) Gift from Mawdrey II
C) Fluctuating Mass

However, here’s the deal. The chance to get the zhaitaffy seems to be incredibly low and on top of that it only seems to drop 1 unit, whereas 40 are needed for the cake.
It’s apparently listed on the loot table for those 3 containers, yet a lot of openings of more than 250 bags have not shown a single piece of zhaitaffy.

So, the recipe itself can’t be obtained anymore and the pieces of Zhaitaffy are rare, yet this bufffood is certainly the best option for certain non-meta hybrid builds.
As haleydawn pointed out, the birthday blaster is to some extent a shortduration, free alternative. However, it lacks a total of 35 stat points(7*5) and lasts only 10 minutes.

Considering that not everyone likes to spam their birthday blasters all the time, there should be something else as a valid long lasting alternative for those of us, who are loving their hybrid builds(even when they are totally out of the meta) yet would like to get the most out of it.

About the price spike in august:

Saffron DID see a decent raise in value from 20th of Juli to 20th of August last year from 2s to 4s, which explains people stopping cooking starcakes. One their prices started to rise a well, people started cooking starcake again.

And you only need one player with that recipe to cover demand, as long as you pay a profitable price.

So again, the price of starcakes has nothing to do with the rarity of the recipe.

I would also argue that this food needs to be that expensive, considering that it gives 315 extra stat points compared to the 170 regular food gives, plus 20% MF.

Compared to other foods, the price has also been incredibly stable over the last year (same for Zhaitaffy) apart from the spike of 3 weeks in August.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

For chef 500, there’s a recent post.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Can-we-have-500-cooking-soon

The recipe for the starcake was always intended to be rare, as a nice RNG drop for spending gems on Rich Dragon Coffers (a few people got the recipe automatically, as a result of the original drop table being bugged).

I have mixed feelings about ANet changing things at this late date. On the one hand, the OP is right about the higher prices — it will keep getting higher as more players who know the recipe stop being as active, without any new source. On the other hand, it seems unfair for them to change the rules.

I’m inclined to support the OP’s (implied) suggestion that ANet offer this recipe again. Perhaps the best way to do it would be through BL chests.

The price of starcakes has nothing to do with the rarity of the recipe but the unusually high amount of ingredients needed to cook it.

Astralporing.1957:

That’s going to impact PvE players’ interest in PvP rather severely, i guess.

morrolan.9608:

Grant only mentions currency from PvP and Fractals. What about WvW?

They haven’t mentioned it, so if it’s coming, it won’t be anytime soon. Notice, however, that they haven’t mentioned Raids either.

Anyway, before they implement it, they’d better fix the leather problem first.

Justine.6351:

Ascended gear is becoming too easy to aquire just like exotics were when the game launched.

Well, if Anet’ll want for new people to get into raiding, while at the same time keeping to use sledgehammers as a skill balance tool, that gear should really stay that way.

After looking a bit deeper into the leather market during the last week and the changes they made with the new farm, I am not sure that Anet sees any tier of leather as a problem. I would even reckon that its intended.

When asc armorcrafting got introduced, t2-5 cloth was the bottleneck because damask was used in all 3 armor weights, while gossamer got dirt cheap because it was needed in ascended crafting.

With HoT and the introduction of patches, which are needed for t1-7 armor for all armor weights, the bottleneck shifted to leather.

I think with that, they intended to addres one the first problems they encountered with gear in GW2:

Cheap Exotic Gear.

It was not feasible to make vanilla exotic gear really expensive a year after launch so they introduced ascended.

By introducing gossamer patches as requirement for exotic (and ascended) armor, crafting prices of exotic gear more than doubled. This didnt have too much of an effect on exotic gear with vanilla stats because those have too many different faucets already (crafting, forging, loot drops, karma, dungeon tokens etc.) and most of them were freely tradeable.

The new exotic gear with HoT stats however, doesnt have most of those faucets and you are basically left with having to craft them as they are account bound on acquire.

So I think the changes made to leather were done primarily in order to raise the price of exotics.

This will most likely be made available via the API at some point. I think i remember reading it is being worked on. Not sure if recipe unlocks are already exposed by the API or not but once they are, i would guess gw2efficiency will work on including that in their account statistics.

Nautilus.6580:

From what I understand in the patch notes, the Auric Basin Multi Map has gone the way of Old Yeller……..

It’s understandable that this has been removed, as it was a loophole in the event that allowed players to receive more rewards than was earned. Additionally, players not accustomed to mutimapping were at a huge disadvantage in crafting/ the economy (if salvaged items were sold instead of used). This being said, it was the only way to reliably obtain globs of ectoplasm.

Under the old system, you could probably get 30-40 ecto/ 30 minute session with anchors (8 Maps). Too much, yes, but is there anyone else that has trouble getting those anywhere else. Even with a monotonous schedule of world bosses and fractal dailies, or silver waste trains with 3 hours/ day you might make 10-14 ecto in that time. That means if you are spending any time outside of your main character leveling another profession or learning other builds it becomes a burden.

Does anyone else agree/ disagree, or are there better ways of finding rare equipment to salvage? I’m not trying to be a spoiled gamer, but the drop rate of rares in this game needs to go up in harder content. It is a relentless grind to find these items in the game, and people that have taken advantage of the system will sell Ectoplasm for a huge markup now that the MM is gone.

Did you actually use up all the ectos you earned from ab for your own consumption or did you sell them?

Danikat.8537:

Wanze.8410:

aerial.7021:

Lahmia.2193:

Chad.6104:

means every time someone does daily, it HARMS every other player’s economic power, ever so slightly

How about everytime someone vendors the loot they get instead of selling it on the trading post? That harms every other player’s economic power ever so slightly also yet you haven’t recommended removing vendor value from loot.

I vendor all my sigils. I’M GOING TO RUIN YOU ALL MUHAHAHAHAHA.

LOL! I guess I’m helping you then, it’s too cumber sum to dump them on the TP and even if you could batch drop them all the return is meaningless, those things are worthless it’s not like they are superior vigors or anything, oddly if you compare them from a GW1 perspective would be highly more valuable if you could equip them, I guess someone in the last 250 years worked out how to mass produce them on scales not see since God invented dirt.

I think one of the greater benefits traders and especially speculators have for the economy as a whole is keeping unwanted supply in game. Taking your worthless sigils as example:

During their first year of existance, Superior Sigils of Mischief dropped like candy and nobody wanted them. They were basically traded a little over vendor value for a whole year. If none of the speculators would have put in buy orders for those in that time, players would probably have just sold them to a vendor (not in this case, as the sigil has no vendor value) or simply destroyed them. In any case, those sigils would have been destroyed and taken out of the economy.

But as plenty of speculators put in buy orders at low values, they probably saved hundreds of thousands of superior sigils from being destroyed.

That supply hoarded by speculators considerably eased the demand spike during wintersday 2015 and also 2016 and is probably the only reason why superior sigils of mischief this year stayed below their forge value (value of mats needed to forge them) of 20g each.

As you can see from my screenshot, I sold around 16k sigils in the last 90 days for an average of 1.17g, which means the supply I bought and hoarded for more than a year, enabled 320 players to craft their essence of mischief for around 60g instead of paying 250g (5g average price for sigils during wintersday).

Without that supply from speculators, all those sigils would have to be forged from scratch, which would have consumed 20 mystic coins for each sigil.

It would have taken 320k mystic coins to create my supply of sigils this year, just imagine what that extra demand would have meant for MC prices.

But importantly you’re not coming to the forum and demanding we all express our gratitude to you for this incredibly generous public service you have undertaken on our behalf.

I get compensated in other ways for my public service.

OriOri.8724:

Wanze.8410:

aerial.7021:

Lahmia.2193:

Chad.6104:

means every time someone does daily, it HARMS every other player’s economic power, ever so slightly

How about everytime someone vendors the loot they get instead of selling it on the trading post? That harms every other player’s economic power ever so slightly also yet you haven’t recommended removing vendor value from loot.

I vendor all my sigils. I’M GOING TO RUIN YOU ALL MUHAHAHAHAHA.

LOL! I guess I’m helping you then, it’s too cumber sum to dump them on the TP and even if you could batch drop them all the return is meaningless, those things are worthless it’s not like they are superior vigors or anything, oddly if you compare them from a GW1 perspective would be highly more valuable if you could equip them, I guess someone in the last 250 years worked out how to mass produce them on scales not see since God invented dirt.

I think one of the greater benefits traders and especially speculators have for the economy as a whole is keeping unwanted supply in game. Taking your worthless sigils as example:

During their first year of existance, Superior Sigils of Mischief dropped like candy and nobody wanted them. They were basically traded a little over vendor value for a whole year. If none of the speculators would have put in buy orders for those in that time, players would probably have just sold them to a vendor (not in this case, as the sigil has no vendor value) or simply destroyed them. In any case, those sigils would have been destroyed and taken out of the economy.

But as plenty of speculators put in buy orders at low values, they probably saved hundreds of thousands of superior sigils from being destroyed.

That supply hoarded by speculators considerably eased the demand spike during wintersday 2015 and also 2016 and is probably the only reason why superior sigils of mischief this year stayed below their forge value (value of mats needed to forge them) of 20g each.

As you can see from my screenshot, I sold around 16k sigils in the last 90 days for an average of 1.17g, which means the supply I bought and hoarded for more than a year, enabled 320 players to craft their essence of mischief for around 60g instead of paying 250g (5g average price for sigils during wintersday).

Without that supply from speculators, all those sigils would have to be forged from scratch, which would have consumed 20 mystic coins for each sigil.

It would have taken 320k mystic coins to create my supply of sigils this year, just imagine what that extra demand would have meant for MC prices.

Conversely, if these traders hadn’t kept this massive supply of sup sigils of mischief in the game and instead let people vendor them all, then ANet wouldn’t have removed the sigils from the drop tables of wintersday gifts due to the sheer abundance of them on the market. And since ANet wouldn’t have removed them, all of the millions of players not in the “1%” would be better off for it this year due to sigils still being insanely cheap.

You can try as hard as you want to justify why you guys are “good” for the economy, but its all bullkitten and you aren’t fooling anyone. These sigils were a problem precisely because of people like you buying and hoarding millions of them in the game, which prompted ANet to remove them from drop tables. Telling us how you lessened the problem this year that you helped to create doesn’t suddenly make you a good guy LMAO

They removed them from the wintersday gift drop tables in 2015 already and moved the faucet over to the festival vendor. And I bought mine before they done that.
If you think the problem was in too many reserves in the economy, you should blame the players, that sold them to me instead of deleting them.

Can you also please provide a source where Anet mentioned that they took the sigils off the drop table because there was too much supply outside the tp?

aerial.7021:

Lahmia.2193:

Chad.6104:

means every time someone does daily, it HARMS every other player’s economic power, ever so slightly

How about everytime someone vendors the loot they get instead of selling it on the trading post? That harms every other player’s economic power ever so slightly also yet you haven’t recommended removing vendor value from loot.

I vendor all my sigils. I’M GOING TO RUIN YOU ALL MUHAHAHAHAHA.

LOL! I guess I’m helping you then, it’s too cumber sum to dump them on the TP and even if you could batch drop them all the return is meaningless, those things are worthless it’s not like they are superior vigors or anything, oddly if you compare them from a GW1 perspective would be highly more valuable if you could equip them, I guess someone in the last 250 years worked out how to mass produce them on scales not see since God invented dirt.

I think one of the greater benefits traders and especially speculators have for the economy as a whole is keeping unwanted supply in game. Taking your worthless sigils as example:

During their first year of existance, Superior Sigils of Mischief dropped like candy and nobody wanted them. They were basically traded a little over vendor value for a whole year. If none of the speculators would have put in buy orders for those in that time, players would probably have just sold them to a vendor (not in this case, as the sigil has no vendor value) or simply destroyed them. In any case, those sigils would have been destroyed and taken out of the economy.

But as plenty of speculators put in buy orders at low values, they probably saved hundreds of thousands of superior sigils from being destroyed.

That supply hoarded by speculators considerably eased the demand spike during wintersday 2015 and also 2016 and is probably the only reason why superior sigils of mischief this year stayed below their forge value (value of mats needed to forge them) of 20g each.

As you can see from my screenshot, I sold around 16k sigils in the last 90 days for an average of 1.17g, which means the supply I bought and hoarded for more than a year, enabled 320 players to craft their essence of mischief for around 60g instead of paying 250g (5g average price for sigils during wintersday).

Without that supply from speculators, all those sigils would have to be forged from scratch, which would have consumed 20 mystic coins for each sigil.

It would have taken 320k mystic coins to create my supply of sigils this year, just imagine what that extra demand would have meant for MC prices.

juno.1840:

I will agree with this much: the 15% TP fee is game-saving for the economy.

Events like Halloween, Wintersday, and New Year are great gold burns because they award “bags” which are sold in great numbers, draining gold from the economy.

I would be interested in seeing what percentage of the 15% sink is from the 1% doing flips, and what percentage is the “commoners” performing basic buys/sells. Only then can we really say if the 1% is helping the economy in the way the OP states.

LNY is a gold faucet, as the bags/envelopes drop plenty of vendor trophies. Wintersday gifts are probably also a decent gold faucet by now, as people are vendoring nougat, skulls and fangs for 25c each.

Concerning your last questions:

A someone from the 1%, I sold items worth 62.5k gold in the lst 90 days, paying 9.375k gold in taxes, so around 100 gold per day.

Dark matter can be crafted into ascended insignias and sold with a profit.

Shards of Mist Essence can be crafted into runes and sigils and sold with a profit.

Sell Skulls, Fangs and Nougat for 25c each to a vendor. The gold you earn through that actually makes up a good chunk of the average value of wintersday gifts, its a good gold faucet. The 20 million nougat, fangs and skulls listed at 30c would generate 50k gold, if sold to vendor.

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

Khisanth.2948:

I got zero silver doubloons from forging :P

You got platinum doubloons from forging nuggets and shards?

I don’t remember the exact combinations of nuggets/lumps/shards and it wasn’t really consistent between forges but yes and of course some of the results from those were also thrown in.

I think the initial set of nuggets and lumps only gave me more gold than platinum while including shards gave more platinum than gold but there were other factors I wasn’t keeping very careful track of like initial input size.

Well, I double, checked, platinum doubloons are t4, so yo should be able to forge them with lumps (rare chance) and shards (better chance) but not wiith nuggets.

Khisanth.2948:

I got zero silver doubloons from forging :P

You got platinum doubloons from forging nuggets and shards?

Funny how nearly everybody except the OP is talking about silver and not platinum doubloons.

InFluEnZa.6908:

I would imagine it being “Emissary of the Mad King” and “Apprentice Toymaker.” Those titles were only obtainable during Halloween and Christmas in 2012.

Emissary of the Mad King would be the first, I would reckon. But The Lost Shores in Southsun Cove and Fractals got released before Wintersday, so I would say they introduced more titles before Apprentice Toymaker.

Shivan.9438:

They need to run that script again, lol.

Exotic swords with no stats listed for 5,000 gold? Impossible price or gold selling.

They are talking about buy orders not sell listings.

I am pretty sure, once someone manages to list a chak egg sac for more than 10k gold, they might start working on a script for that.

OriOri.8724:

Wanze.8410:

OriOri.8724:

@Illconceived – I disagree that these are statements of feeling and not fact. If the changes to recipes that were made when HoT dropped were not ill thought out and bad changes then we wouldn’t be in this situation where Anet felt compelled to add a new leather source to the game to balance for those changes in the first place. Its a fact that leather prices rose when HoT dropped and changed recipes and added absolutely massive new sinks for leather. And its also a fact that ANet saw this as enough of a problem to devote developer time to coming up with a new leather farm.

You claimed that Anet adjusted recipes by taking off material requirements to ease demand, which they never did.

No, I claimed that Anet adjusted recipes, which in turn, by their own (although admittedly later) account, caused a static change in demand and which didn’t balance itself out. If it had, they would not have felt the need to introduce a new way to obtain leather.

but we are talking about a static drop in demand, not a static change.

OriOri.8724:

@Illconceived – I disagree that these are statements of feeling and not fact. If the changes to recipes that were made when HoT dropped were not ill thought out and bad changes then we wouldn’t be in this situation where Anet felt compelled to add a new leather source to the game to balance for those changes in the first place. Its a fact that leather prices rose when HoT dropped and changed recipes and added absolutely massive new sinks for leather. And its also a fact that ANet saw this as enough of a problem to devote developer time to coming up with a new leather farm.

You claimed that Anet adjusted recipes by taking off material requirements to ease demand, which they never did.

OriOri.8724:

Wanze.8410:

OriOri.8724:

I wonder what the rationale was behind going through the extra work to make a whole new farm for leather instead of adjusting a few dozen (at most) numbers in recipes

Isaiah Cartwright mentioned their reasoning behind this during the AMA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5e6uxb/a_crack_in_the_ice_devs_here_ask_us_anything/daa7qb8/?context=3

That’s a copout. They already changed the recipes before when HoT dropped, which is what led to leather getting in such a bad state that they felt they had to intervene again. Reverting some of those changes, not even all of them, is the better fix to this, since the changes are the root of the problem.

Isaiah says that changing recipes causes a static change in demand, which doesn’t often balance itself out. So the proper solution to this problem is to revert some of the illthought changes to recipes, since that is when leather stopped being able to balance itself out.

Remind me again which recipes saw the amount of materials reduced in the past?

IC talked about reducing materials in a recipe which results in a static drop in demand.

OriOri.8724:

I wonder what the rationale was behind going through the extra work to make a whole new farm for leather instead of adjusting a few dozen (at most) numbers in recipes

Isaiah Cartwright mentioned their reasoning behind this during the AMA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5e6uxb/a_crack_in_the_ice_devs_here_ask_us_anything/daa7qb8/?context=3

mathion.8549:

Last time I looked, TP prices put the sections at about 24 silver. It appears that the USE of hardened leather was increased, but the drop rate wasn’t.

Last time I looked it was below 20s already.

How does it feel complaining about something they just announced to change with the next update?

nope, only the old ones over the trading post.

But you could be banned for this post because it breaks the ToS.

IndigoSundown.5419:

ANet admitted when they introduced Ascended that they badly overestimated the time it would take players to get their exotic gear.

fify

Boogiepop Void.6473:

The current resource system was designed to work well for the initial leveling experience, and it does. But it does not work well once you are max level, which is where you will spend the vast majority of your time. Leveling is the first few months at best, max level is everything else for the remainder of the game. As such, the resource system has 2 large issues:

1. Drop rates from bags are influenced by character level. Items stop being dropped from bags, or at least have their drop rates significantly reduced, in exchange for others, as you increase in level. Essentially, this PUNISHES people for actually playing characters by lowering the drop rates of needed items if you dare to actually max out your character. Instead, people have multiple characters they ACTIVELY DON’T PLAY just so they can use them to open bags.
2. Material nodes are based entirely on map level. So a level 80 map will only have T5 and T6 nodes. But since ALL FUTURE MAPS WILL BE LEVEL 80, we will NEVER get new sources of lower level materials. This forces people onto maps they have no interest in playing, which they have already completed, and on which they do not actually participate, but merely run around ignoring all events and enemies while they farm. This degrades the experience of all players on these lower level maps and causes issues with event completion and aggro swarming.

Drop rates and nodes distribution need to be changed to a progressive, rather than exclusive, model. You need to gain new drops from bags WITHOUT LOSING THE OLD ONES as you level, and new nodes types need to be added to maps WITHOUT REMOVING THE OLD ONES as map level increases. Being max level should let you obtain anything that can drop from bags and a max level map should have nodes of all tiers on it. The game should not punish you for leveling.

(Additionally, already the sources of T5 and T6 mats outnumber the sources of any other tiers by more than 2-1, and eventually, if the system is not changed, they will outnumber all other tiers combined.)

This is working as intended as selling lower tier mats they earn while leveling to end game consumers gives newer players more valuable loot. It also gives incentive to endgame players to populate the old maps (or pay a premium for those mats).

Its a great way to transfer some gold from veterans to newbies and helps keeping the wealth gap in check.

Amaimon.7823:

Wanze.8410:

Amaimon.7823:

Wanze.8410:

Amaimon.7823:

Wanze.8410:

vesica tempestas.1563:

if you still have Magic find to collect and its not way higher then I would salvage – more fun and less hassle.

salvaging rares doesnt give any magic find

Salvaging rares gives Essences of Luck just as much as anything else

since when?

Since when not?

Since always. Only Fine and Masterwork equipment salvages into EoL.

Then where didnall my luck came from after all those multiloots, I rarely salvage blues and greens.. they couldnt have just randomly appearednin my bags

Directly from containers I assume. Never did ABML though, so not sure.

But they definately didnt come from salvaging rares. Unless you salvage the ectos also.

Amaimon.7823:

Wanze.8410:

Amaimon.7823:

Wanze.8410:

vesica tempestas.1563:

if you still have Magic find to collect and its not way higher then I would salvage – more fun and less hassle.

salvaging rares doesnt give any magic find

Salvaging rares gives Essences of Luck just as much as anything else

since when?

Since when not?

Since always. Only Fine and Masterwork equipment salvages into EoL.

Amaimon.7823:

Wanze.8410:

vesica tempestas.1563:

if you still have Magic find to collect and its not way higher then I would salvage – more fun and less hassle.

salvaging rares doesnt give any magic find

Salvaging rares gives Essences of Luck just as much as anything else

since when?

vesica tempestas.1563:

if you still have Magic find to collect and its not way higher then I would salvage – more fun and less hassle.

salvaging rares doesnt give any magic find

John.8507:

3 days of buying envelopes and lost money every time.

Would be easier to just sell on trading post.

If you had the option to sell them on the trading post, it would suggest you already had them in your posession, so you wouldnt need to buy them in the first place.

DGraves.3720:

Okay, so I would immediately get an infraction for typing “you suck, that’s ridiculous” so instead I will say the following:

I think you should revise your particular plan. Perhaps your build is not conducive to the situation you are in. If you know that there are a group of enemies that you will need to take care of and also know that you cannot afford to face them head on perhaps you should put effort into either kiting tactics, weapons that hit multiple targets at a time or condition damage.

Good luck to you, Commander!

I am quite surprised that OP obviously expects to collect valuable rewards clustered across a small area without having to kill a couple of mobs in the process. I dont know why he thinks that those rewards were designed to reward solo players and are not scaled/balanced to group content/rewards.

I just went to Bloodtide Coast to collect my daily tequatl chest but to my horror, I realized that I had to kill tequatl first and couldnt do it on my own. Not on my warrior anyways, didnt check other classes because it doesnt matter. As long as I cant solo teq on one class, he is clearly OP and should be nerfed.

Why do you need to go to the big flax tree garden? Not sure what you mean and couldnt find anything on the wiki.

cant believe nobody mentioned skrittens yet.

Seera.5916:

Astralporing.1957:

Wanze.8410:

I would argue that the mayority of players is fine with a price of 1g BECAUSE THAT IS THE PRICE THEY ARE BUYING AND SELLING IT FOR.

I’m pretty sure that the majority of players do not, in fact, buy MC’s at that price. If i’m wrong, and the number of players is indeed that small, we have a really big population problem.

Equilibrium price isn’t necessarily the price where everyone is happy with the price. There just has to be enough players happy with the price to keep it there. Which is why if you want the price to go lower, then you need to not buy coins until they are as cheap you think they are worth.

You only can blame those players that think mystic coins are overvalued and dont sell their own coins.

If all the players who think MCs should only cost 50s, would fill buy orders with their coins until the price goes down to that price. If only a small part of the player base is willing to pay higher prices, it should be easy for those that think its overvalued to fill that demand and once it is, they can start buying MCs from those, whose demand is filled.

Astralporing.1957:

Wanze.8410:

I would argue that the mayority of players is fine with a price of 1g BECAUSE THAT IS THE PRICE THEY ARE BUYING AND SELLING IT FOR.

I’m pretty sure that the majority of players do not, in fact, buy MC’s at that price. If i’m wrong, and the number of players is indeed that small, we have a really big population problem.

And thats not what I said. I said buying and selling. I didnt talk about players that neither buy or sell.

The mayority of new buy orders will be posted above 85s and most new listings wont be above 1.15g.

As a rule of thumb, if the rare weapon is worth more than the price of 1 ecto on the tp, sell it, otherwise salvage it.

Cristalyan.5728:

IndigoSundown.5419

And, for the record, I’m not part of your “We.”

Just a flesh wound.3589

Sorry to correct you, but I’m not part of your “we” either

Sorry, but, in my opinion, you are wrong. Both.
Because English is not my language it is very hard for me to phrase my arguments, so, instead, I will use an example: The game Warhammer Online. I read that in the old good days this game had around 300k subscription per month. And millions of copies sold.
Then, problems started to appear. Not major problems, generating a mass exodus of the players. Common problems – only parts of the playerbase were lost due to each of them. That problems were never solved. And although none of them affected all the players, in the end the playerbase reached a level of 50k subscription per month. In that moment the servers were shut down and the game is now history.
You see the point? For 50k of the players the game had no problem. But they eventually realized that the problems the other players had were, in fact, their problems also.
The same with GW2. A part of the playerbase has a problem. If we don’t try to solve this situation, in the end, we will be all affected.

I’m surprised also of ANet attitude. Remember the HoT launch?
A lot of complains – about a lot of issues. The official attitude? These are not problems, of the game. The players are: not good (git gud – remember? ), lazy, casuals, full of imagination – inventing false problems, enemy of the game! Remember Collin’s words? The complainers are not interested in GW2 but instead they want to hurt the game! Every single reason was valid, but not what the players said – the game has problems.
Well, you know what happened – some players (how many only ANet knows) left the game. And the players problems suddenly started to be ANet problems. And the Game Director had problems. And he left the game. Nobody learned from this?

A part of the community having a problem means that the community has a problem. Stating that you are not affected is a statement that you are not part of the community.

Back to the topic: The price for MC is not the real problem. The price is the consequence of the real problem: The way the MC enters the game. And this is what – in my opinion – ANet should fix. And they should try to fix other problems too.
Before the problems affecting – each of them – parts of the playerbase will start to affect even the players considering themselves to be not affected.

First of all, you dont pay a monthly sub for GW2 so you cant really compare it with Warhammer. 2nd of all, I still wonder where you got your info from on how many players like or dislike the price of MCs. I would argue that the mayority of players is fine with a price of 1g BECAUSE THAT IS THE PRICE THEY ARE BUYING AND SELLING IT FOR.

As they are not participating, I doubt it

Ensign.2189:

To that end, Mystic Coins represent around 11-13% of the cost of one of the original legendaries, which I think is perfectly fine. They do however represent around 18% of the cost of an HoT legendary, which I think is pushing up into a range I’d be concerned about. That’s a price range where ‘waiting around for the time gated currency’ is starting to put the brakes on legendary creation, and that’s not a good set of incentives to have in the game.

It should be noted though that the ~481 mystic coins you need for the new legendaires might cost you 360g more than compared to a year ago, those additional costs were offset by the diminishing value of amalgamated gemstones over the last 10 months, as the stack of AG will cost you 375g less today. So additional costs for old or new legendaries through higher MC prices cant be an issue atm.

Regarding some other points you made (and i didnt put into the quote):

I dont think MC can be treated as a time-gated material for legendary crafting on an individual basis because you can buy them from the TP.

And for legendary crafting, we should also consider the other faucets for mystic clovers (reward tracks, chest of legendary crafting materials) as a “source” of mystic coins.

I dont want what OP asks for.

I also claim to speak for a big mayority of people with the same opinion as me.

Cristalyan.5728:

Wanze.8410

And they recently renewed their stance during the AMA that they dont have a problem with the current value of mystic coins, so I dont know why people expect them to change anything.

Sorry to correct you, but we are not talking here about ANet’s problem. This is a player’s problem. And, because it’s supposed ANet is very careful with the playerbase problems, we expect that problem to be fixed.

Remember that ANet had no problem with all the initial issues from HoT – and a lot of players left the game. Then, this started to be an ANet problem and the Game Director left the game too.

Again, nobody on this Forum creates topics about ANet problems. All the topics are about players problems.
And in this case, it seems that ANet simply refuses to fix this problem – the reason is the health of the economy and the TP – at least this is what they say. I wonder, how the growing number of discontent players regarding this aspect can help ANet. Because, at least for me, is clear that not the TP or the economy is the real reason of this stubborn attitude.
Anyone remembers resonating sliver? The price for this product went down from 75s to few coopers in the moment ANet decided to add more sources. Was the economy killed by this? The TP crashed? NO. So, adding new sources and allowing the price to drop is not a problem for the economy or for the TP.
Why in the case of MC this is a problem? And for who is this a problem?

I dont know how these issues are even remotely comparable but I am sure that you can provide a source where Anet mentioned that they dont think Resonating Slivers and their low droprate after HoT where a problem and they publicly stated that they dont plan to fix their droprate because they think its fine as it is.

Haleydawn.3764:

Wanze.8410:

• Perseverence only applies extra MF when opening Lost Bandit Chests, so useless for envelopes

The 30% is a permanent effect while you have the perseverence buff. The bonus MF attribute on top of this only applies to Bandit chests.

exactly, he mentioned 150% from the 5 stacks

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5om1y4

A reliable, frequent Redditor

He just seems to be a redditor for a month though.

Edit: Some comments regarding your 2nd post:

• The 1.33s per envelope result from the gold value of the common trophies divided by 1000
• Perseverence only applies extra MF when opening Lost Bandit Chests, so useless for envelopes
• Disregarding opportunity cost (which is quite low) using a stack of fine Eol will earn you a couple of gold each by upgrading rare zodiac lanterns into exotic ones, so 7 stacks will net you some 10-20g extra

OriOri.8724:

Wanze.8410:

Obtena.7952:

Actually, I’m more than satisfied. Besides, for a company that has taken a hands off approach to the TP, it’s pretty funny they would give anyone the impression they will do something about this considering they already make MC’s available to every player for nothing by doing nothing. I can’t wait to see their solution actually, just to see if it makes MC’s cost even more than they do now. That would be hilarious. I can see it now “we are increasing the number of MC you get from your login reward by X” … how people would still QQ.

I agree, dont know why people think Anet will do anything about it after MOB said:

So we’re watching them closely but not taking action at this time.

And if they watched them as closely as I did, they would have seen that nothing much has changed since Mike´s answer.

A small spike in price, when Wintersday was released, which was expected due to Winters Presence and that small spike after the buy out, which didnt even last a day.

Apart from that, prices and supply are pretty much the same as in November, so no need to expect a change.

You claim that ANet won’t do anything about them, which is in direct contrast to the fact that ANet has been slowly adding more sources for MC. Internally, at least for a while, they either agreed that

A – There was actually a problem with MC, or

B – Enough people were upset about MC that they needed to do something

But regardless, they did add new sources, so its not as if they haven’t touched MC at all.

I didnt claim anything its what MO said in the AMA at the end of november:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5e6uxb/a_crack_in_the_ice_devs_here_ask_us_anything/daa579w/

And please correct me, if I am wrong, but I am unaware of any sources of mystic coins that have been added after that AMA.

The MAMA challenge mode was released with that patch and the fractal chests 7 months ago. The only source I am not sure about its release is the Ley Line Event but I think that was also during S3E1 in July last year.

All those three sources just add a little bit more unelastic supply because they are all limited per day per account and were probably only put in to cover additional demand that was expected from the release of Eureka in E2 and Shooshadoo in E3 later on.

So if you can link any sources for additional changes or statements regarding mystic coins by Anet after November 21st, I will regard your post baseless assumptions and speculation.