Guild Wars 2

Dropping prices only raises revenue if there is a significant increase in unit sales. If the Black Lion Keys are already a high volume item then there is no incentive to drop prices because the increase in volume won’t offset the lost revenue from the lower sale price.

If the Keys were overpriced, ArenaNet would have adjusted the prices by now. The fact of the matter is that they must be selling at that price and with enough volume to where they don’t need to put them on sale.

Takarazuka.3025:

mtpelion.4562:

I have done some herb runs in the past when I noticed price spikes on the TP, but the RNG involved in which nodes spawn and what you get from the nodes makes that very annoying.

You can always hit up the various “farms” in game that have larger numbers of the items in them. There are always multiple units of nodes at each one and it resets every 23 hours. Not steady income, but if you are in the area then you can always grab them and sell if you aren’t going to use them.

I usually hit the farms, but other than grapes they don’t have the “paydirt” herbs.

I enjoy playing the game, so I do a decent amount of gathering while doing events, map completion, leveling, etc.

That said, I don’t usually do targeted gathering of anything other than wood or ore (because they are easy to find).

I have done some herb runs in the past when I noticed price spikes on the TP, but the RNG involved in which nodes spawn and what you get from the nodes makes that very annoying.

Vewen.8016:

No you are wrong. We traded in our token because at that moment at least I assumed that the vendor would disappear within a certain amount of time and he did.

Fungalfoot.7213:

A lot of people assumed that the vendor would disappear and that the token would be made worthless since back when the fused weapons first came up there was no black lion skin vendor.

Hey, I traded mine in back then too because I also assumed, but you know what they say about making assumptions…

I see the reasoning behind the decision by ArenaNet and I agree with it.

If you held your TOKEN then you clearly did not intend to use the skin on your characters because you still have the TOKEN.

If you held your SKIN, then you already cashed in your token for the skin you intended to use.

On the one had, you hadn’t actually used anything yet and thus probably didn’t want/like the skins and now have the option to sell them so that you can get some value for the token you were holding. On the other hand, you consciously decided to trade in your token for a specific skin because you wanted/liked it and are now upset that you can’t convert it into gold.

I will say that I found the forge to be useful while leveling.

Keeping your gear up to date with Karma gear is easy, unfortunately though, that Karma gear can’t be sold or salvaged when you are done with it. What I do is simply store the gear I’m replacing until I have 4 items and forge them. Sometimes the new item is useful, but most of the time it is simply profitable (you can get Karma gear from the MF, so sometimes you get a piece back that is just as useless as your old gear was).

Vote for Evon!

Oh wait… that’s… nevermind.

I don’t think they have reimbursed anyone yet. Can anyone confirm?

jazzllanna.1278:

What lies? And as the thread progressed, as is the case with most discussions, new views and ideas came out. I started by stating that getting text for the tp from an outside program is wrong. Another person stated that they could be used by bots, I agree and it strengthens my case that these programs should not be allowed.

By that same argument we shouldn’t even be allowed to log in to the game because being logged in can be used by bots.

Notifiers and Bots are about as far apart as possible when it comes to function. One lets you know when you should play the game, the other plays the game for you.

Bots out in PvE are an actual danger to the economy. They generate gold and thus put casual players at a disadvantage due to the inflation they cause.

Bots in the TP (I’m not sure if they have these or not, but the concept is plausible) are still a violation of the TOS, but they are not harming the economy (directly, at any rate) nor are they harming casuals, so they are a much lower priority on the list of things to spend limited resouces fixing list. Botting on the TP is not the same thing as automatic notifications though because the notifications still require you to log in and manually take action in game. They are not automating any in game process, they are simply telling you that you should log in.

A hacker is someone who obtains access to your account from a distant computer.

A terrible friend/family member is someone who obtains access to your account by sitting at your own computer and logs in because you left the automatic login feature on.

It sounds like you have a terrible friend/family member problem, not a hacker problem if support indicated they found no evidence of a hacker.

LoomDart.1839:

mtpelion.4562:

Since you can get them from Black Lion Chests now, I believe that supply will remain relatively constant and the price is probably overstated right now. I expect the prices to come down as more people open chests.

Wait, so can you get dragon jade tickets from black lion chest? if so, can you also get fused tickets?

Sorry, the wiki was unclear and my interpretation was incorrect.

Do they still provide a benefit? Yes.
Is that benefit significantly less useful? Yes.

They are not “Completely Useless” as they still provide a benefit and that benefit is still valuable to some players.

I agree that it sucks that they have lost a large portion of their usefulness post purchase, but the same could be said for my VHS player.

Right now, they are kind of rare because they only drop from low-medium range chests and from Mystic Forging (MF) lower level materials.

They are valuable because they are used in the crafting of a Legendary weapon.

With the upcoming changes to Magic Find % (MF%), I’m guessing that someone decided it was worth a gamble to buy out the stock and hope that the doubloons will be turned into something even more valuable (they currently only serve to add MF% when used as an upgrade, so SOMETHING is going to have to be done with them).

I’m a big fan of my Cleric wellmancer build.

My guess is that someone is speculating about what will happen once MF% is removed from the game.

I haven’t personally checked, but I was under the impression that all of the skins available from the Black Lion Weapon Specialists were available for the BL chest scraps. If that is not the case then please disregard my previous posts.

There is a separate process that launches when you start GW2.exe. It has “awesonium” in the name and it runs the Black Lion Trading Company program.

If you start up the game and load the Black Lion screen, you should be able to alt+tab out, open your task manager, and find the process by sorting by name.

Sorry, you can indirectly get them now from the Black Lion Chests by trading in the ticket scraps.

Since you can get them from Black Lion Chests now, I believe that supply will remain relatively constant and the price is probably overstated right now. I expect the prices to come down as more people open chests.

EDIT: It appears that my interpretation of the wiki was incorrect due to the wiki being incredibly vague. I was reading it as if the BL tickets could be used to buy any of the skins available from the BL weapon specialists and that is apparently not the case.

Healix.5819:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Is there some sort of reason you didn’t open the boxes? That’s a ton of wasted inventory space, not to mention I don’t see what the incentive in saving them is. Did you think the loot would be better if you incubated them?

It’s even more wasted space if you open them. 1 stack of boxes turns into around 5 stacks of sprockets and a 1 skin 50% of the time (for me at least). I have very limited free space and on that character, I only had about 10 free slots. I planned on storing the boxes on that character (warrior), which except for the gauntlet, I very rarely play. Since I just started making a guild bank, if the boxes weren’t changed, I would have opened them next week, when it was done and stored all the sprockets until I decided what to do with them. Assuming they’ll never revert this, I’ll probably stash the boxes for a few months, or maybe forever. I still have the event items from haloween for example.

I fully expected them to nerf deadeye. I didn’t think they would go as low as outright destroying it. I assumed they would just change what boxes dropped, just like Subject 7. Generally, developers don’t do what ArenaNet has done here and if the farm was more popular, they would have reverted these boxes just like they did for karma. They probably won’t however, since probably less than 1% of the active population farmed it, so why care.

The Karma change is being temporarily reverted not only because it affects everyone, but because the Karma to Gold conversion rate is low. The rate of gold generation with Duel farming was significantly higher making it a threat to the stability of the economy.

How about this:

If you combine 3 copies of a dye with a X in the Mystic Forge you can get an account copy of the dye.

Make sure your firewall is not blocking the “awesonium” process. The BLTC uses its own executable file.

Mesket.5728:

Ok please enlight me, how do I farm 100 Charged or Onyx or Corrupted without having to buy them… how do I farm 250 of each T6,… how do I farm stacks of Ectos? Answer in time units compatible with human life…

For the sake of your intelligence I do hope you are not being serious about not needing more than 120,5g for a Legendary.

They take time. Time that you can trade for gold. The bare minimum amount of gold is not that high, however the time cost is prohibitive and farming gold is faster.

There is an actual minimum required amount of gold, anything above that is used to reduce time.

Obsolete != Useless

I’m still using my DVD player even though Blu-Ray made it obsolete because it is still useful (and because I won’t pay more than $40 for any kind of disc reader).

Celestial gear is still useful and will be even after ascended gear arrives because you more than likely will not be able to put on a full suit of ascended gear on day one.

Korsbaek.9803:

what you need gold to get exept the runestones, the recipes and the gift of battle?
anything else is a shortcut and a huge one to but its not needed to take the shortcut

While I mostly agree, I do think that buying the precursor is “needed” since the drop rate is so low. Expecting one to drop is, quite frankly, dumb. Expecting the one you actually want to drop is many orders of dumb.

Can you get one without buying it? Yes.
Should you wait for one to fall into your lap? No.

jazzllanna.1278:

I actually have no issue with undercutting and outbidding from players in game. I understand the market and how it works. My whole point was that these programs need to go because they are in fact outside programs that should not have to be used to use the trading post. Anyway this post seems to go no where because the only ones that answer are the ones that use the program and will defend them until the end. I know there are players out there that are unaware or just do not want to join the discussion, but I hope that anet sees the issue and is silently working to correct it.

I don’t use them. I simply recognize why they are valuable to those who do and that they don’t appear to violate the TOS. Like I said, I’m mostly a junk vendor. My heyday of market control was back in WoW where it was really easy (since each server had its own economy).

You should expect to see some very expensive items soon. They wouldn’t have added a gold faucet without a reason.

Ok… it looks like my point isn’t clear enough. Allow me to elucidate:

The game is called “Guild Wars” after a fictional historical event. It is not ABOUT the Guild Wars, nor is the playstyle of the game guilds at war.

Playing the market is no less valid of a playstyle simply because “Black Lion Trading Company” is not in the title, just as running fractals is not a valid playstyle simply because “Fractals of the Mists” is not in the title.

Better?

EDIT:

I was being completely sarcastic in order to poke fun at Lord Byron’s “Fantasy Market Manager 2” title.

You know, I thought it was a bid odd that you of all people would have said that. I didn’t pick up on the sarcasm it seems.

Ursan.7846:

mtpelion.4562:

Last I checked, my guild can’t go to war with any other guild so I’m not sure what your point is.

I don’t think you’ve heard about the cut-throat corporate competition that went on between King Doric and his contemporaries.

I heard about it, but that’s only because it happened well outside of the first game’s timeline.

My point of course being that the title of the game is almost 100% irrelevant as far as the playstyle is concerned. They could have called it “Dragon Stabby Game (with Tree People!)” and it wouldn’t have mattered.

LordByron.8369:

Sorry i thougt the game was called guild wars and not Fantasy Market Manager 2

Last I checked, my guild can’t go to war with any other guild so I’m not sure what your point is.

jazzllanna.1278:

When you use dragon timers or wiki does that effect other players though? Do you get a text message when a dragon is up because it is necessary? I realize that if this was to disappear it would cut deep into many pockets.. so I understand the defense. That said I still think that this should be a major issue that is looked into, or does arenanet just expect us to use the outside programs to use their trading post effectively? Was that the plan all along? Why not make a sticky then notifying all the players of these websites they need to sign up for so they can trade- without interfering with their game play, or watching tv, or whatever else they may be doing at the time so they know to log in and adjust their bids.

The only people who need to use the trading post “more effectively” are people who are trying to min/max their revenue. If you want to min/max your revenue, you need to put in the effort to research your market as well as use the tools that are available to protect your own investment.

The average player (me, most of the time) uses the TP as a way to clean out our inventory after a hard day of dungeon/fractal running, or questing with a friend/guildie. My concern is not to maximize my profit, but to get some profit with the least amount of work. Unless I know it is something valuable, I’m simply dumping inventory onto the TP at the current sell price (if it is profitable to do so). On the days when I do want to play the market for a while, I whip out my spreadsheets and history data and find ideal values.

Even if the notification tools were not available, the people who are babysitting their listings are always going to have an “advantage” over you because they have a vested interest in having an advantage and that advantage is simply that they care enough to monitor their listings. The only way you are going to be able to have a “level” field with these people is to do exactly what they do, which, if you don’t enjoy playing the market, you simply aren’t going to do.

Here is the Dev comment:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Karma-hoarding-wanted-warning-about-change/first#post2664304

Programs from 3rd parties are allowed if they don’t violate the TOS.

Sending a notification violates nothing. If the program actually logged in and relisted your items on your behalf we’d be having a very different conversation.

Buttercup.5871:

You, mister programmer/notifier user, have a MAJOR advantage over normal players who (1) presume a notifier is against the TOS + code of conduct (which it is, don’t make me show you again)

Do you believe that timers for world bosses also violate the TOS?

Shhhh! It’s a new cult taking over Tyria.

The Order of It’s Not Pink, It’s Light Red.

Gem sales keep the game going, so I don’t have a problem with unnecessary items being sold for gems.

That being said, I enjoyed the trading card aspect of the birthday minis from GW1 and I’m disappointed that they didn’t bring it back.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Maybe because we wanted to give everybody in the guild the opportunity to use the guild karma bonus? And not everybody is online all the days of the week…

Did it really take you longer than 2 weeks to organize said opportunity?

Also, the buff costs a measly 500 influence, takes 2 days to queue, and lasts for 24 hours.

I’m not trying to kick you while you are down, but your excuse just rings hollow.

Is the bank slot still present or is that gone too?

I used all of mine the day the wallet went into the game. There is absolutely no reason for them to be hogging up bank space now that the wallet is in place so I have to ask the question, why were you guys still hoarding them?

Calae.1738:

That’s why I made the statement earlier that in the world of GW2 your inventory tends to fill up with a bunch of virtual junk. A trading post where players can buy and sell virtual junk makes sense.

If the junk was removed the players would have to earn “whatever” through actual game play mechanics rather than clicking a stupid spreadsheet.

That was my point anyway.

At that point there would also be no reason to have any money since you wouldn’t be able to buy anything. That “junk” is the only reason people need money in the first place.

Calae.1738:

Like yourself; I would rather play a game were the most skilled warriors are the wealthiest rather than the day traders who play spreadsheets.

The only time the “most skilled warriors” are the wealthiest members of a given society is when those warriors kill people and take their wealth. Since GW2 doesn’t allow player killing or taking of a player’s inventory, your ideal anarchy state isn’t feasible (or desireable, really).

You see, there is very little economic value to killing. In fact, I would argue that it normally results in a net economic loss since killers produce nothing of value and are essentially “stealing” to survive. By killing producers, the killers harm the economy as a whole.

Avatara.1042:

You might as well have just posted ‘I do not understand at all’.

I’m just going to assume that your lack of supporting arguments belies your ignorance of the content of this discussion and that your lack of knowledge generated the impetus for you to lash out at my post. Your impotent insults are duly noted and filed under “laughable” in the “irrelevant” cabinet.

I’m kind of confused as to why people are saying that Mesmer portals are skipping or trivializing the Jumping Puzzles. Now, my Mesmer is only level 22, but I’m pretty sure I have to be able to stand in both locations in order to set up the portals.

That means that no skipping ever happened. I had to do the entire JP before I could set up a portal.

With regard to the time limit idea, all that would do is eliminate supply from the market. If you eliminate supply you drive up prices while simultaneously dramatically reducing the volume of trades (i.e. eliminating the main deflationary action in game). You’d be chaining inflation with low supply and probably end up bankrupting every player in the bottom 25% within a month.

The MF returns an item that is 5-12 levels higher than the average of the 4 items, so you could “cut” your 50’s with some 70’s and get some 70’s back.

Aedil.1296:

EDIT: please don’t tell me to buy from TP becouse I’m not gonna pay anyone else for having more luck than me, or I drop it or I forge it, it’s a matter of principles.

I just had to laugh at this part. Let me rephrase what you just said into real life terms:

Please don’t tell me to get a job and earn the money to buy a used car because I’m not going to pay anyone else for having more luck than me. I will only buy a used car if I win the lottery and get the money that way because it’s a matter of principles.

Fact is, the BEST way to get a Precursor is to simply buy it. You have arbitrarily decided that you will not buy a Precursor outright and have come here looking for sympathy because you can’t seem to win the completely random Precursor Lotto (which is much more difficult).

Stop choosing to do it the wrong way and simply buy it.

We can’t control markets in this game because we have no way of preventing new items from being generated and sold. I can buy out 100% of current stock, of an item which would give me “control” for all of 2 minutes followed by (most likely) insane amounts of competition resulting in a net loss.

You can’t make money by “controlling” a market because other players are constantly creating new items by killing mobs and instantly listing those items. Money is made by playing the margins, which means buying underpriced items and selling them at a more correct price that is still profitable (after the market fees are taken out).

In the real world, I could feasibly use my trillions of dollars to buy up every diamond mine on the planet and all of the diamonds from the jewelry stores and then I would essentially control the diamond market. We can’t do anything even remotely similar in game though because we can’t own the vicious claw mines and keep other players out of them.

Everything is worth what the purchaser is willing to pay for it.

If I buy all of the Precursors and list them for 1 million gold each and someone buys one, then it is worth 1 million gold. Since it is worth 1 million gold, the old prices that I paid were low and thus, the precursors were undervalued.

It isn’t control. Precursors are being created all the time and sold on the TP. Other players have money and can buy the listings as well. Additionally, you’ve just cited “Random Guy on the Internet” as your proof. He is more than likely fabricating his statements in order to appear “1337”.

It isn’t hurting the game. Legendaries are optional content that bestow no benefit.