Guild Wars 2

Lil Puppy.5216:

In the first place, how the hell am I purchasing things with a metaphysical mechanism?
You must have tons of karma if you can just throw it on the TP along with your almost as hard earned gold, why don’t we toss in some dungeon tokens and badges of honor too. Might as well restrict the TP to commanders only while we’re at it.

You make the assumption that Karma is a currency. I’m purchasing things with my ‘goodness’, my willingness to do good.
Karma merchants (really bad way of saying that) are exchanging what little goods they have with me for the FAVOR I did them earlier. Karma isn’t a currency and should never be seen as that.

Why this game doesn’t have bad karma is pretty simple, Anet didn’t want us to be bad guys, we’re supposed to be the good guys, but maybe I’m an kitten.

Played a game that had both, don’t remember what it was but when you used or accumulated ‘bad karma’ it reduced your ‘good karma’ by the same amount and vice-versa (was probably Fable or something) so you could be the kitten that saved the ‘whatever’ or the good guy that saved the ‘whatever’.

Anyway, you get karma from hearts (those run out if you don’t have extra character slots) and dynamic events and you get that karma in really small amounts, the gold you get is from selling all the stuff you loot from monsters in much greater quantities. Taxing me a dynamic event every time I want to sell something is an kitten move, not to mention the failure of the OP to see that you’re taxing me based on favors to the people… Taxing me Experience is also stupid (literally…). How are you possibly going to tax my fighting experience? “You can buy this but we’re going to have to make you forget your last 3 fights!”

Experience, Karma, Skill – these things are NOT CURRENCIES:
Experience is a memory, Skill is a physiological memory, Karma is a metaphysical mechanism representing a FAVOR owed to you from someone else(Heart NPC) in the game.

STOP trying to eat my pretend world with all your taxes! You tax income, income is monetary in nature, coin pieces stamped with the empire logo are money, money is taxable.

You cannot tax my memories, you cannot tax my efficiency at defending the empire, you cannot tax my accumulated favors. STOP IT!

I’m sorry you feel there aren’t enough things to buy in the game from NPC’s that would take gold out of the pockets of the lower class, this is ANET’s problem. There is no content that we can purchase from VENDORS that takes away our gold in larger quantities that are ALWAYS available – not talking about any of the time limited multiple item bartering ones that require several gold pieces for a lackluster item. There are simply no permanent large scale gold sinks in the game excluding the gold->gems and TP taxes, listing fees, sales fees, and what is it that phone companies do? cramming? yeah, put unexpected charges that I didn’t opt into on the TP as well why don’t we?

uhh karma in this game is currency

but if you want, you can think of it as the government looking the other way because hey you are a hero and did great things, this money you want to take must be useful somehow.

Vayne.8563:

Kanebrake.6192:

Just go look at one of the review sites online for what it’s like to work for Arena Net. Read what former and current employees are saying. Should give everyone some insight into why things are so screwed up in this game.

How many people posted to that site, out of hundreds of employees. You know I’ve had people complain about working for me too. And then, I have people who have told me and still tell me it was the best job they ever had.

Going to a site like that is like going to a forum. The people who have complaints are always the loudest. It proves nothing.

ehhh like the above poster said, there are common threads/complaints against both current and former employees, as well between differing reviews. If everyone had dif cons, it might be bias, but there is probably some truth to the issues. Its also pretty consistent with the interviews, videos, releases etc that we have seen.

That said nothing is perfect, but the game itself seems to be floundering with its new development

DaveGan.8065:

The thing with stockpiles of karma is that it’s still a one-time anomaly. Once it’s gone those players are back on an even playing field.

These kinds of anomalies are created (and exploited/taken advantage of) every time some special event comes around anyways.

Overall I don’t see it as that big of an issue.

well i think the worry is a flood imbalancing the economy for awhile if karma becomes more valuable, but they could just put a limiter on it like they do with wvw chests, andachievemt boxes.

Neural.1824:

-1

Thanks Wanze, way to completely kill the last remaining bit of enjoyment I get out of GW2.

I have little karma because I spent the last of it on obsidian shards. I’ve not run an event in weeks, and I haven’t done any “normal game play” for months, because, in my personal opinion, the game is anything but “fun” the way it is currently run. Dynamic events are dull and unrewarding. Dungeons have gimmicky mechanics (stacking, skipping, etc.), world bosses are limited to once a day, etc. For someone who is a loot focused player, GW2 has dried up completely, because Anet’s path to obtaining anything worth having in this game is “grind gold, buy on tp or gemstore”.
The only thing I had left was to flip and make a few gold (max) every day or two on the TP while I sit and hope for a change of direction from Anet. Now you want people like myself to go mindlessly grind dynamic events until our eyes bleed, just so we can flip on the tp?
Your idea comes across more as a PvP finisher. You’ve won the flipping game and are tired of making gold, so now you want to completely eliminate smaller opponents and solidify your position of extreme wealth.

so essentially what you are saying, is every facet of the game sucks aside from playing the TP, and the main purpose of the tp is give you some thrills with the hope that the rest of the game stops sucking.

hmm
lot can be said about that

Wanze.8410:

Making stuff available for karma has 1 big problem that i realized in my karma tax topic. It greatly favours those that have a huge stockpile of karma.
But i agree that switching farming spots (for specific items or karma) more often and cycle it through different content would improve the general game meta to break up trains or at least give some more variety to them.
For karma i already made some suggestions in the other topic:
-DR for karma gain
- add a karma gain buff for different content each day (dungeons, wvw, pvp, fractals, heart events or certain maps)

The same could apply for items. Well DR is already in place but buffing certain content would work:
- additional t6 crafting bag for completing a dungeon on a certain day
- increased droprate of associated skins/weapons from teq/wurm on a certain day
- a specific reward for doing a map completion again (would need to talk to a npc on that map to reset your map completion progression, if already completed)

massive karma people would be a problem its true. But they would be a problem no matter how they readjust it, since the problem is they already have it. Perhaps they could limit the max karma expenditure per day for tradeable items (to a pretty high number) yes some people would be pimping for awhile, but ehhh, they earned it. They could also do something like allow karma trading for black lion chests/transmutation charges/ other gemstore consumables for a short time frame before making changes to karma aquisistion.

Honestly though i dont think karma aquisition is that bad, My main change would probably be to scale it better on difficulty, give greater bonus to events that have failed, or not been completed in a long time, and reward it based on how much of the events you were actually involved in. Say you only participated for 1 minute in a 10 minute event, 1/10 the karma.

karma is mostly event based, so i wouldnt say DR is a good idea, yeah people who play more get more of it, but ehh, they played more. people who want dont want to get left by players with a lot of time will either need to have more skill/knowledge or buy gold, that doesnt really change. Except their may be more varied methods/meta for earning gold effeciently.

Wanze.8410:

snip

Well i didnt give solutions to leave it open to people to comment/think about, first i wanted to show the problems of the system.

but looking at your example, you wouldnt see as heavy fluctuations as you think, the items that are most often found in karma train areas would go down, decreasing the value of repetitive karma trains
i think this is good, then people will be making a choice between fast karma, and fast loot gain. Right now, whatever the most people are doing is the most profitable in almost every facet. karma trains give superior karma, superior exp, and superior gold. This would theoretically spread players out a lot more, and make each type of content aside from the meta more profitable

As far as huge fluctuations, wouldnt really happen, people who specifically are trying to supply the lacking items would quickly adapt and jump in. Even with fluctuations, good old flippers would save the day, and actually be providing a better service, because their normalizing effects would be more necessary.

The main problem would be the devaluation of whatever items are dropped by the current meta in terms of non market focused play.

As far as being back to farm trains, thats where we are today, except they arent varied, rarely change without developer intercession, There already is a best way to play, and it essentially generally becomes more and more the best way to play the more people that do it. This would increase the variety, and knowledge, and depth of being a supplier, much like TP players are generally less bored, because they have to adapt to a living breathing economy, suppliers would as well.

To reduce the effect of the non suppliers favorite meta decreasing the value of drops, I would lower the output of certain materials through non-targeted play.

to balance this loss in items, one could make karma be a more horizontal currency, giving you the option to buy many materials with karma, the caveat, would be that based on mathematical analysis of general karma flow, these items value would be noticeably less effecient to get via karma, they could even automate the costs of these tradeable materials to cost more or less depending on how much karma is generated versus supply of these items.

Monsters outside of these karma focused areas/events could have higher drop rates, or players could take on titles that enable or increase certain types of drops, or any of many otherways to increase drops through focused play.

In this way the supply would be intentional, while at the same time people would have ineffecient access to items they need. It wouldnt increase the overall gold, and supply would adapt much better to the demand of an item, and the time of aquisition

however, i do agree that the current system has the advantage of a relatively stable, and abundant supply, most of the time. However with that advantage it basically means that supplies will generally be of low value almost by definition.

I would suggest that any targeted item systems be saved primarily for later game for this reason. While leveling, the current system is fine, it tends to become a problem later on in the game, when players have matured, and the farming meta tends to become fairly stale.

As far as the things you suggested as direct farming, its not really accurate, those are the best ways to mass farm items, without any specific focus(other than level of items). You just increase your volume of random drops. All those farms are based around the realization that killing lots of stuff with as many people as possible that allow you to still claim credit will give you the most of everything. They dont target a specific supply, they just increase production overall, which actually lowers the value of items for everyone.

There is little player control of production in this game. How does that design effect our economy?

There are two ways in which players dont have good control of production

Selection and quantity.

• Selection: the production of many items is primarily dominated by non selected creation. This means, players dont choose to create these items directly, a signifigant portion of the supply of most items happens without player intent.
  examples
  • iron/copper/mithril/wood(gathered materials) many are produced through random drop bags, and salvage
  • equipment: much of it is produced through random drops from any monster in the world, some higher level equipment is also produced as an undesired byproduct of trying to obtain a legendary.
  • runes/sigils: mostly created through random drops or mystic forge gambling.

• quantity: a signifigant portion of the supply on many items is a function of how many players play at a certain level. Since leveling is a one way process, this means overall control of quanitity of supply is out of player control, other than to play, or not to play.

So what effect does this have on the economy?

• lack of selection: there is a lot of waste in our economy, this is because the only way to get an item you want is to increase overall production. produce more goods, thereby increasing chances of getting desired items.
  • problems with this are
    • by increasing general output, you overall decrease the value of your product.(you are increasing supply of all materials, while the demand stays the same)
    • any product whose random creation isnt below its demand, will eventually become worthless. (only worth its base parts, or vendor value)
    • Overall we get a fairly wasteful economy, with many items being created with no real value. This also means the methods of intentionally creating these items, has small value. This overall makes most items feel worthless/low value.

• problems with lack of control of production quanities.
  Since we also dont control quantities, the market tends to be unable to handle changes in demand well. When items demand goes down, it continues to be produced, when its demand increases, its value spikes.

• Most of the solutions for these problems must be handled by developers, since players have no control, they have to do things like reduce supply, or create demand manually, they often will respond way slower to these things than the market would on its own. (being that patches are not deployed willy nilly)

So how does this effect different player types in the economy? Well supplier players are at a disadvantage, they provide the same product every one else does. And they dont have a strong ability to target specific items, even when they do, they are competing with people who have little or no vested interest in the cost of producing this product through intent.
In general, players have to take most of their items to market (to get liquid currency) and then spend on market, because targeting specific items is difficult.

This puts players at a disadvantage to marketeers, who can opt in, or out of their services, and target specific markets, because a supplier is competing with a large amount of people with no knowledge (and sometimes very poor business sense)
Essentially suppliers have little personal choice in the value of their time.

I believe this is one of the primary reasons the game tends to feel unrewarding, and why the game tends to feel like a grind to many people who start trying to achieve a specific item.

Danikat.8537:

One thing I don’t understand though: Is it really that unusual that people are surprised?

I know it’s not unique to Arenanet. There’s a game I’ve been waiting for called Creatures 4 that was supposed to happen back around 2005. It was virtually confirmed for last Christmas. Now it’s expected to enter beta testing sometime this summer. And it’s an almost completely different game to the one originally planned, or even the one announced 2 years ago.

For an extreme example see Duke Nukem Forever or….dare I say it…Shenmue 3.

and people tend to site those examples as failures of the development team, within those time frames.

Danikat.8537:

And this is why developers normally avoid telling anyone anything about their products until they’re almost ready for release.

Even Peter Molyneux learnt that lesson.

actually this is not true, most developers tell you their plans way ahead of the release. I know right now, from software is working on “bloodbourne” I know ffxiv is going to release a ninja class. we know they are going to have an expansion, and we know it will add multiple jobs. Capcom lets us know sf5 is in development.

most companies actually do let people know what their plans are, even if they do get pushed back.

As for you proposal, like i said, its numbers driven, it will also feel like penalty to most players, it wont come across as something to strive for, and karma is not really delivered in ways that promote playstyles evenly.

Main sources of karma event spam, and fractals 10 levels lower than you.

Most likely this will lead TP players to focus on event tag spamming in EOTM.

Its kind of good that it will add a layer of depth, to buy orders, and it will make people do other things, but think about what things it will make people do.

What sort of play will it incentivize?
Is that the sort of play that you want to expose people to?

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

snip

my answer, not really nerf the TP directly, but increase the depth/challenge and amount of goals that can be acheived through other playstyles. Then let people put a price tag on that skill/depth/challenge. This will balance out the feeling that you cannot attain wealth in other ways, at the same time it will make people feel like playing the tp isnt the only way to win (if they are skilled at it).

phys i am aware of your opinion that challenging content from other playstyles should reward better loot and i even share it to some degree.
Your other main objection seems to be that to much desireable items are mainly available through gold. This is inevitable in a game that lets you exchange real money for in game gold, unless you pay a subscription fee.
I told you many times that you should open your own topic about it to get a proper discussion going, not spam it off topic on the 3rd page of a thread that is about something completely different.

So if you dont have contructive feedback for my proposal, I would appreciate, if you leave your off topic opinion in a different thread.

that was a response to a post that i had to cut due to message length.
Someone asked for reasons why they should try to alleviate wealth disparity, i responded, and with my opinion on it. feel free to report me, they will probably remove it if they see fit

IndigoSundown.5419:

Even if flipping were to be eliminated, there would still be wealth disparity in GW2. Depending on a myriad of factors, the disparity may well be as bad as you perceive it to be now. Ergo, I have to believe that the real issue in relation to wealth discrepancy caused by flipping is that people believe flipping either produces too much wealth; or that it is believed to produce an acceptable level of wealth with too little effort. I’ve seen both assertions made — and I’d like to know what leads people to those conclusions.

I can see that the new currency suggestion being salable might serve to spread the wealth a bit. That might be a positive thing. As I’ve said before, however, I am concerned about how ANet would balance acquisition. People with the explorer playstyle are already behind the curve on all other rewards, and I’m reluctant to be further behind the curve by adding a new currency that could restrict my ability to get the best deal I can on the TP. Wanze seems to think it could be balanced to not impact anyone except flippers who don’t play the rest of the game. If so, then all well and good.

As to rising costs of the few high-end items GW2 offers — this can hardly be attributed solely to flipping. There is also the steady increase in the amount of gold in game and the low supply engendered by ANet’s actions to slow goal completion. Addressing either of those issues could lower precursor (etc.) prices without complicating a specific function on the TP.

wealth disparity happens, The key is
What is life like without wealth?
What is the standard of living?
Can you attain your goals?
How do you attain your goals?

All online games have wealth disparities, but in the ones i played, gold was generally the secondary means of obtaining high end goals. You could get wealthy by doing something epic, or going on an adventure, Or being lucky. or being a master merchant.

Problem is, right now, most goals are based around gold as the most direct path to them. Now in other systems, since this is not the case, the wealth disparity isnt that important.
but here?
So the fact that no matter how good/hard/skilled/knowledgable you are at other facets of the game, you will never be able to compete with some one skilled at another playstyles, bothers people.

let me make some analaogies.

say a person thinks about getting legendaries, mystic forge skins, gem store unlocks, as their goal.
now compare that to a pvp player setting winning a tournament as his goal.
TP players are essentially analgous in this case to being a class, whom when mastered, can do 10 times the dps, and take 10 times less damage than other classes.

anyone who enjoys any other class, will not be able to beat that class (when mastered)

what many people here say is,
stop playing tournament pvp
or learn to play that class.

so if thats the reasoning, you have to either give up on your goals, or play something you dont like.

my answer, not really nerf the TP directly, but increase the depth/challenge and amount of goals that can be acheived through other playstyles. Then let people put a price tag on that skill/depth/challenge. This will balance out the feeling that you cannot attain wealth in other ways, at the same time it will make people feel like playing the tp isnt the only way to win (if they are skilled at it).

mrauls.6519:

I really wish ArenaNet would add a bigger amount of content within reasonable time frames. While the Living Story is fun and enjoying to play the feeling does not last long. I’m not one of those players that speeds through everything to say “I did it”, I am one of those players that takes his time to enjoy the game and experience the true beauty of each update. An expansion filled with as much or more content as the original release would make me extremely happy, and I feel there are reasons why it would benefit the player base that fell in love with GW2. I’m really at a loss at how some players that have been playing since launch can continue to run the same 8 dungeons over and over. There have been slight changes and adjustments, but I really wish there would be new story mode and explorable dungeons. I’m not talking about one or two either.

I find myself at a loss when I play GW2 now. I’m doing the same things over and over. Fractals are fun you say? Well where do they lead you? I’m just another voice speaking my opinion. I want bigger content launches, and I want them now rather than later

Thank you for reading,
Mes

I beleive anet miscalculated with their development cycle. The game has gone on too long without a substantial increase in content. They also made some misteps

my feeling is they will have some lower earnings this quarter, and probably the next. How they choose to adapt to this situation, and what they do about it, will essentially decide the future of the game.

Buttercup.5871:

Wanze, what about the crafters?

I’m particularly concerned about cooking, as some recipes require a large amount of expensive materials (e.g. revelry cake or all F&F recipes), and the profit margin is only to be found in 1) the difference between buy and sell order prices and 2) cooking in bulk. Without those, it’s no longer interesting to craft. So by adding your proposed tax, I think many will simply stop crafting. Which is not a good thing.

I’m not so sure about this proposal. It has many dubious knock-on effects. Another crafting example I could imagine is the many precursors crafters won’t be able to afford buying the mats, or have to buy the mats for too high a price, further increasing the precursor prices.

Edit: it also discourages new people to start crafting because they don’t have the karma.

hmm crafting being linked to karma is nothing new, it is already like that for cooking. and ascended crafts. In fact their are some designs where karma being worked into crafting could enhance it.

That said, the overall idea…
i dont hate it, but it just seems really boring. perhaps if karma somehow represented things that benefited the game in some way, it would be more entertaining, but really? people would just flip while grinding karma.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

That was indeed a good rebuttal. But we must go back to the facts here. Gems can cost either real world money, or in game Gold. Time is a factor in the accumulation of in game Gold. Time has “personal” value to the player, not a monetary one. There is no way you can attribute a monetary value to Time, unless it’s in the process of earning something of monetary value (i.e. a paycheck from a job).

So while you can make the argument that exchanging Gems costs the player’s Time to accumulate the necessary virtual currency to make the transaction, that exchange cost no real world money out of pocket. The exchange is Free, in a monetary sense.

We could have the eternal debate that Time = Money. But the flaws in this debate is that it’s only the perception of Time = Money, because one can hold Time as being valuable. This misconception leads people to then make the connection that Time = Valuable = Money.

As an example, say you work an 8 hour job that pays you $20/hour. If you decide to call in sick to play GW2 (assuming no paid sick leave), that means 8 hours of your Time was equal to $160. The Time now has a monetary value, because that’s what you could have potentially have made if you didn’t call in sick. So if you farmed all day long to exchange Gold for Gems, the argument then stands that yes the Gems were not free. This would be the only time that the argument could be made this way.

Actually nerelith is correct, in high end terms. currency that is doing its job is actually a measure of effort/skill/knowledge/time/value.

from a perspective, you may be right, time is not literally=money

however, from that same perspective, dusk is not literally gold.
If i find dusk, did i find gold? If i keep dusk have i saved gold?
did dusk have no value once i equip it?

its a matter of perspective in some respects.

but the truth of time is that all effort/skill/knowledge/ etc you use has a value, ultimately in an economic system, its currency.

the key is figuring out what the value of that time is, depending what you are doing in that time frame.

ultimately, in this situation, your time has a monetary value, for anet. Anet is makes a certain amount of money, by allowing you to sell the fruits of your time to someone who wants that product.

For the player, it has a monetary value in terms of how much money you save, through these actions, and depending on the person, how much money you could make with that same time applied to something else.

In general though, time is money. The people who stay rich figure out how to transform it most effeciently.

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

but really the only reason to discuss these semantics, is if you genuinely believe some misunderstanding is occuring because of it.

so to be clear, when you see reward mentioned in my posts, it will be defined as this

reward: something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.

It has been explained multiple times and your definition doesn’t fit both. You are choosing to conflate the 2 terms intentionally to support your baseless assumptions in this thread.

Reward = result of playing the game and getting “new” materials/gold into the economy.

Profit from investment = Investing in and using materials/gold that has already been created and in circulation.

2 VERY different things.

this is you guys new definition which has nothing to do with english.
I would have to create a new word that most people wouldnt understand to describe what the word reward usually means.

would you prefer i said value gained?

Behellagh.1468:

And that’s one of the age old arguments in developing rewards.

One side want rewards tied to doing specific content thus sporting such an item is a testament of your participation in that event.

On the other are players who want all items available via secondary or tertiary paths of acquisition which does include simply buying them from other players.

The second group doesn’t want to be forced into gaming paths they either don’t enjoy or are especially difficult for them to do (JP and PvP in my case) and they will always butt heads with the exclusive reward content players. Making one group happy makes the other group unhappy so the best choice for MMO devs is to make both groups only a little unhappy.

being able to sell these items is a key part of the plan to making tp and gold earning more balanced.

If you can sell items you can only get through mastery and intent (whether that be hard content, a lot of content/knowledge) you will have a valuable item to sell, to the people who dont want to do that content. You will also be personally invested in the value of that item, instead of it being something you need to get rid of. If the item isnt worth your time, you wont produce it. this means it is less likely to be flipped at a large rate.
at the same time it will give goals for different levels of play and mastery at those types of play. Since most of the rewards will be tailored to the playstyle, some will not even try to sell it, they will use it for themselves mostly. They will only sell when the price is right.

pdavis.8031:

But supply of every item on the TP is already controlled by the players. Every T1-6 mat, every precurser, legendary, exotic weapon, skin, recipe, food, etc.

While they may not be suseptable to flipping, like dusk, they will still be highly priced items, that your avarage PvE player wouldn’t be able to afford for a long time. And so you would still have the perceived problem that those who complete said tasks are “richer” than a dungeon runner, or open PvEer because they are able to sell the item at a high price. (Of course that price will reflect their time and effort put into such a task, plus a percentage for profit).

I’m not opposed to having such a thing in general. I’m actually for such a thing. It’s similar to the precurser scavanger idea thats been tossed about. But I don’t really see it as a solution to anything. It might make those who go after such things “feel” better about the rewards, but still the initial issue or TP players having too much money still remains.

Lore driven track? HECK YES!! I would love that, even if for a stupid skin and maybe a bit of gold at the end. But having extended missions like that would be rad. OOOOO make them Order Specific!!!!

no the supply of t6 is not controlled by the players, other than in the same way that humans control the amount of oxygen they breathe.

t6 item supply is a function of how many hours every player plays in a level 76ish zone + the amount from people who transform t5 items.

you cannot choose to stop producing t6 mats while playing a certain level of content. The majority of t6 mats are created by accident. There are a few enemies with specific drops, but the majority of the supply doesnt come from them.

We cant control how much silk comes in or how much leather. we create by essentially just living as a level 70+ charachter in the world, its almost like our feces. A substantial amount of the exotic weapons are a byproduct of precursor gambling (the feces of precursor gambles) most of the runes? byproduct of trying to get strength rune/divinity runes back in the day from the forge

In real life, most products are sought after, you dont make refined oil by mistake, you dont get steel by mistake, you dont build buildings by mistake. If no one wants steel? steel production slows down.

players will have means of getting rich through specific content, so while the tp players may be well payed, they wont be the only path to riches. A big reason there is so much ineffeciency for flippers to take advantage of, is because most of the supply comes from random players with other goals, and a bunch of crap to get rid of.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

in your opinion this is the case
thats why i suggest that every major mode have some unique rewards that you can specifically target, to the exclusion of other rewards, that you can also trade

this would allow you to get dungeon hardcore dungeon shinies, at a price set by the players that do dungeons, and they could get your dedicated open world shinies at a price set by you open world cats.

right now, instead of trading value /services/skills, people can only trade gold earning potential.

Wait, having specific “mode only” rewards as a way to increase the “value” of doing PvE/WvW/PvP to be more in line with TP flipping? (just trying to get what you are saying). but would such tangible rewards (anything other than AP. i.e. skins, loot, gold, etc.) be considered a grind? There are already a number of players who think this game is too grindy as it is. Adding in only a WvW reward, for example, that can only be obtained through that paticular game mode would mean that it exludes those who don’t or rarely play WvW. Sure they can buy it off the TP, but it would be another precureser level item, as it would be highly sought after by those who don’t want to “grind” WvW, or even want to play WvW? Even so this doesn’t really solve anything, as it just becomes another item to flip on the TP.

Ok, taking your example.
Lets say there was a precursor level of item, it takes either a lot of WvW, or extremely skilled WvW, or a combination of that. It also requires you give up other rewards (gold/loot/event rewards) while pursuing it.

heres the big difference, its supply is controlled by the players. Players will only actively turn off their standard rewards if this has value. The other difference is its something a player who doesnt want to focus on gold has first dibs on. They get it first, then choose the price they find acceptable for the time/work they do. Not only that, but this is their product, that they will continue to produce, they are no longer the guy who puts items on ebay that he randomly found trying to clean his basement, they are proffesionals selling their service.
They are lot less likely to sell to frivolous buy orders in this case.
take a look at dusk right now
http://www.gw2spidy.com/search/dusk?recipes=
flipper has no place in this item right now, the buy order/sell order price is less than 15% because the majority of people selling precursors consistently, are in the business of selling precursors, and the demand backs it up.

As far as grind, it will eliminate some grind by being partly based on skill/achievement in a chosen field. But there will of course still be some effort required, or it would have low value.
the grind should also be less than others because it is specific, eliminates chances for other rewards, and can only be gotten in a specific way.
since say only 20% of the population WvWs, and only 25% of them opt in to this system, and only 50% of those who opt in actually want to sell the items, the supply will be low, even if it isnt insanely super grindy. If its starts to become not valuable, people will opt out, and reduce supply, allowing it to return to value.

basically the people selling these items will be doing it for business, they will not be uneducated consumers who have to sell to consume. The items will be rare due to being specific, and designed to take a decent amount of effort, or a great amount of skill. Since the production will in this case be deliberate and controlled, the value will be high, And flippers will probably not be able to make comparitively as much on these products.
Conversely the specific play of various player types will have value, and they wont feel like they must grind gold specifically to succeed.

This allows TP players to still be the highest gold earners, while still giving content players a way to earn big cash by getting better or delving deeper into their chosen baliwick.

Heck they could even have a lore driven track where you hunt/discover knowlege and pass tests and compete with dissertations on the world of tyria to get credit. It doesnt have to be only about dungeon running twitch skills. And for this tyrian scholarly pursuit? you can sell items that others may want without having to actually read a text box.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

my guess is that these issues, even though they may not be as drastic as the OP was, keep coming up, and are a source of contention for a lot of players. Theres nor real point in burying the thread if another one will pop up next week.

As to your point about dungeon runners create items/rewards and have no risk that is a matter of game design which means, it can be changed, also the risk on the TP in order to profit is highly overated. It is greater than zero, but there are methods which will result in a strong net gain in money consistently. Also when you start talking about “risk” you need to start including time.
the big risk in dungeons, is time. A bad dungeon run? could take 20min to an hour
if the most basic activity pays 4 gold an hour, that means they are risking 4 gold to 1.3 gold with failed runs.
whereas time risked while TP trading?
lets say i go with high and low on soft wood, lowest price over last 24 hours was 1.05 silver, highest sell price is 1.41 silver, lets say i bought at 1.07 silver and sold at 1.39 i make 11 copper per sale, you make 27 silver per stack, to do do buy orders for 10 stacks and sell orders for 10 stacks takes about 2 minutes.

my risk in time is fairly small, for 2.7 gold return.

You can’t compare the risk of “losing time” for a failed Dungeon run to the risk of actually losing money on bad investments. As an example, say a player purchased a Monocle when prices were 500 Gold, but a re-release dropped the value to 40 Gold. Yes this would be more of a speculation problem at its core, but since we’re talking TP and risk, this example still applies. As for more short term risk, say I purchased 10,000 pieces of Mithril Ore at 50c each, but prices dropped to 38c. I just lost 10,000 × 12c of net worth. For a Dungeon runner who fails a run, you just lost your time. As I stated on the other page of this thread, the Dungeon doesn’t take away Gold whenever you fail a run.

Now as for the issue of TP, and the negative feelings the OP and others have for it, John brought up good points in his post. These players simply don’t understand how American type free market systems work. But it’s hard to really educate them via in game tools or tip-bars. This is something you need to learn in school. Not everyone is familiar with business or economic talk, just as I’m not familiar with how to change a tire on my wife’s car (but at least I know how to pump my own gas!)

As an aside, I would really like to know if the OP is just anti-Capitalist because he doesn’t like rich people, jealous that he’s unable to be rich, or just wants in-game mechanics to benefit his play style over others. All his posts in this 10+ page thread could indicate all three.

mathmatically there isnt really a difference between a loss of earning rate and direct loss, once you consider the factor time is money.

when you get into the hardcore earning mindset, time really is money.
every time i had a bad dungeon run, it was costing me money.

I could earn 5 gold an hour without having to pay attention, and just doing 4/7 frostgorge bosses

this means every minute has a base earning time of 8.33 silver a minute, in an easy carefree watch netflix level of effort.

so the dungeon that may pay me 1 gold an hour and cuts my earnings in the same time period down to 1.6 silver per minute is in fact a huge risk.
as far as risk from speculation
Im sorry but you are straight up gambling thats different, flipping and most TP merchanting practices are pretty far from gambling. The only real risk is how long it will take, and the more money you have, the less that matters except for turning over your profit again.

an analogy for speculation in would be like betting 2k gold on a spvp match or in a pve dungeon speed run competition.

Ohoni.6057:

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

No.

As much as I hate the current TP flipper economy, I hate hardcorz raiding even more. No masochist dungeons.

Really leave dungeons out of the discussion entirely, dungeons are the least interesting part of this game. Focus on Living World and other open world content.

I’ve thought of a good solution to all of this, that would fix a lot of the problems that people claim TP tycoons solve. Add an ANet Tradebot.

Have ANet build their own bot that constantly trawls the TP, looking for the same good deals that flippers look for. Any items where the order price is more than 15% lower than the sell price, it buys some of them at the order price and offers them at 5% below the sell price, pocketing the profits. It would also stockpile items that were selling too low when supplies are unusually high, and trickle them back in when supplies lower. These functions shouldn’t be too hard for ANet to pull off, especially given how they know in advance what items will be increasing or decreasing in supply.

Using this mechanism, they could maintain a sub-15% differential on ALL buy/sell prices, maintain a relatively stable pricing on commodities, prevent skyrocketing luxury good prices by preventing people from making excessive amounts on the TP, and ALL the profits involved would be pure gold sink, rather than going into the pockets of TP flippers. It would offer all the supposed benefits of the current economy with none of the downsides.

in your opinion this is the case
thats why i suggest that every major mode have some unique rewards that you can specifically target, to the exclusion of other rewards, that you can also trade

this would allow you to get dungeon hardcore dungeon shinies, at a price set by the players that do dungeons, and they could get your dedicated open world shinies at a price set by you open world cats.

right now, instead of trading value /services/skills, people can only trade gold earning potential.

eithinan.9841:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

That is what dungeon tokens are for. The various gift of (whatever) for 500 tokens are used to craft some of the coolest skins in the game including legendary weapon. I personally hate the grind game in every other mmo where to get gear you have to re run the same content over and over again, Gw2 has so far avoided that particular curse so far.

phys.7689:

Now the real issue i see, is one of incentives, and control of production.

One major factor is that TP earnings scale with skill/knowledge/investment noticeably better than other activities.

To make this less the case, you have to come up with systems that reward differently based on how skilled/invested you are in something.

You are still conflating “reward” and “profit from investment”. They are still 2 different things.

Vol.7601:

this is still going on? I thought multiple points from the resident economist would have calmed things down

I think its still going strong because this one is fun.

your definition of reward and profit from investments may be different, that is not my meaning

reward is
“something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc. "
this would put profit from investment as a reward for investing
enemy loot as reward for killing things

it all fits into the category of reward, you do something of value, and you get rewarded for it. The only argument i can see being made for profit not being a reward is that you didnt provide service merit or hardship, but i would say that investment is actually a service.

I understand people want to define things outside the scope of the normal usage and english language, but if you do so, the burden of explaining that new usuage is on you, not the person using the language properly.

but really the only reason to discuss these semantics, is if you genuinely believe some misunderstanding is occuring because of it.

so to be clear, when you see reward mentioned in my posts, it will be defined as this

reward: something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.

Mckeone.9804:

What I find amazing is the extent to which this troll is being fed. The OP is either so parochial that he cannot grasp anything beyond “I don’t like that other people have something that I don’t have and don’t want to work for, so it’s bad” or is just being a deliberate troll. In either event, you can’t convince someone of something they don’t want to believe (or admit to, for trolls).

Based on the evidence, I don’t see any structural problems with the GW2 market/TP. It’s fair, it’s transparent, and anyone who cares about making money can put in the effort to research prices and take advantage of the fact that a large portion of the playerbase just wants to (a) cash out their drops right now and (b) not take on the risk of posting a sell order. This isn’t like Wall Street, where (a) you have privileged access to free money from the federal reserve and will get bailed out if you fail, and (b)to get access to Wall Street firms, you have to have the right ivy league school on your resume or family connection to get in the door. There are no barriers to entry and no safety nets if you make bad investment decisions. And if everyone cared about making money using the TP, no one would because margins would crash to zero.

Moreover, the whole thing about “dungeon runners should get better rewards because they have more skill” ignores that (a) dungeon running has no risk of loss and (b)would allow players to introduce currency into the game at an unlimited rate. In contrast, TP is a currency suck, which helps mitigate against monetary inflation.

I sincerely think that threads such as this should probably just be closed.

my guess is that these issues, even though they may not be as drastic as the OP was, keep coming up, and are a source of contention for a lot of players. Theres nor real point in burying the thread if another one will pop up next week.

As to your point about dungeon runners create items/rewards and have no risk that is a matter of game design which means, it can be changed, also the risk on the TP in order to profit is highly overated. It is greater than zero, but there are methods which will result in a strong net gain in money consistently. Also when you start talking about “risk” you need to start including time.
the big risk in dungeons, is time. A bad dungeon run? could take 20min to an hour
if the most basic activity pays 4 gold an hour, that means they are risking 4 gold to 1.3 gold with failed runs.
whereas time risked while TP trading?
lets say i go with high and low on soft wood, lowest price over last 24 hours was 1.05 silver, highest sell price is 1.41 silver, lets say i bought at 1.07 silver and sold at 1.39 i make 11 copper per sale, you make 27 silver per stack, to do do buy orders for 10 stacks and sell orders for 10 stacks takes about 2 minutes.

my risk in time is fairly small, for 2.7 gold return.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Why are rewards obtained via dungeons, events, etc. capped or at least impacted by DR? All of these constraints exist because once players who play content for rewards get those rewards, they stop playing, complain about nothing to do or both. ANet has struggled with keeping people playing since shortly after launch.

I agree that there are few rewards for skilled play in PvE content. Why is this so? It is so because ANet chose to reward participation over skill in PvE. There are PvE players who believe this is better than locking rewards behind skill barriers. There are other PvE players who believe the opposite. So far, at least, ANet has provided much fewer rewards that are skill-gated.

So far, at least, I haven’t heard any TP players complaining that there’s nothing to do and threatening to leave the game as a result.

even if its not heavily skill based, its just not very deep. skill is one form of depth, but there are others. for example, 5th grade math is all roughly the same level, but there is many facets to it, you can have many problems, you can combine different aspects, its very deep.

Tp players have a constantly changing environment which rewards them based on time put in, skill, and intial investment. This is why tp players are generally pretty happy. (they also can cherry pick most rewards) That doesnt really exist for other forms of play.

but economicly, i would say the biggest problem (i have said it a lot) is the lack of control of production. players who bring items are always at a disadvantage, because they have finite inventory, and finite use, and in order to get what they want, they have to by and large trade.
You are basically requiring every player to know most markets, which is unreasonable, but if they were choosing a product, they would only need to know one market, and they would have a vested interest in maintaining the value of that market. If the market doesnt meet their desires they would abandon the market, lowering supply, and increasing its value.

Economically, imo this is the biggest flaw of the system, and gives TP focused people the advantage, because their business is knowing all of these things, whereas other people are just offloading things they create while breathing.

Demonts.4593:

http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/182450.pdf?attachmentId=182450

Look at the bottom of the first page

I mean it from NcSoft so I don’t see how its not true what do you think.

they have said that 3 times before in these reports

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

phys.7689:

However, i think anet is more concerned with time at this point. Thats one of the reasons they want to do outfits now, because its less time splitting up the peices and seeing how they interact with other peices.

That’s why I don’t understand that they put in the time to create two separate outfits but then deny each character one of the two based on the gender and sell it as one.

If you’re pressed for time, then why design something completely different for the two genders?

If you have the time to design two, why not sell them separately and make more money?

because you believe the cost of retailoring it to the other gender doesnt = the projected profits from its sale.
IE they think that if they only have the time to tailor one male, and one female, they are going to pick the male on they think will sell the best, and the female one they think will sell the best.

Dagins.5163:

Death to capitalism! Death to bourgeoisie!

Dungeon farmers, orichalcum miners, dynamic event labourers, WvW zergers… comrades! Let us unite under the red banner of Tyrian Communist Party! Together, we shall send a petition to Arena Net, banning everyone who have more than 300 gold, dividing their money between its rightful owners – the working class!

New class will be featured – the worker! Every worker will be equal, and have gold cap set at 300 gold. If you don’t want to start your character from scrap, you can receive class conversion scroll for free. All other classes will be removed soon, so make haste before you are removed with them!

Trading Post will be removed aswell, because it’s a capitalist device of oppression!

Soviet Tyria – equality and happiness!

you realize many people want a system where the most hard working/skilled people can make as much as the other players think their work/skill is worth?
the problem here is, tp has a different skill-reward scale and a higher cieling than anything else in the game. Therefore, other forms of skilled/hard working players will always make less.

Problem is right now, capitalism is only in the TP, regular play rewards are controlled, and limited. players dont controll supply/production outside of the TP, where the tp player chooses what goods to offer liquidity, sales, transform, etc.

Fenrir.3609:

Profit from dungeons scales with skill/knowledge. You can make very large amounts of gold per day from speedrun tours and path selling.

Which flies in the face of some of the arguments raised thus far. The gold you can gain from top end pve is more than enough to efficiently aquire luxury items. Moreover I would be interested to see people explain exactly how they are flipping out multiples of the amount you can make speedrunning/selling, on a regular, consistent, daily basis.

wanze just said he makes about 200 gold a day from buy orders. When i was trying to finish my legendary, i think i made about 60 gold a day from TP/merchanting/transforming items, and about 30-40 gold a day from pve, i spent way more time in pve than flipping.

The cap on dungeon direct earning is 36.5 and since dungeons primarily are good at awarding gold, they will scale poorly with inflation. The only way to not scale poorly is to offer some unique product. thats 25 paths, if each path takes an average of 10 minutes to beat(and move to the next one), thats 250 minutes, or 4 hours and 10 minutes or 8.37 gold per hour. you do make some more money in drops, lets say you make 10 gold an hour.
pretty skilled work, long hours
but from what i remember, selling everything(lowest seller), my calculations on frostgorge champ train was somewhere around 9 gold an hour. you arent really getting paid that well for that level of skill, except possibly in selling paths, and thats mostly because you are bringing something to market, even then i would love a breakdown of how long it takes you on average to solo the dungeon up to the boss (without exploits of course) and how long it takes to fill the party.

I was not a TP player of high skill, and i was beating highly skilled dungeon runners in earnings in less time, while i was at the same time making money from gold grind farms

Skilled dungeon play has a ceiling in rewards, and they cannot really raise it, because it currently would throw off other rewards, aside from path selling.

The current means of skilled dungeon play only track speed, they dont track deaths, they dont track what objectives you completed, and they dont track enemies killed, or quality of the enemies killed, it also doesnt track well to dungeon path difficulty. As a means of tracking your skill/success it is kind of shallow.

Aside from the gold awarded, the other items have little value attached (in general)

and just think, dungeons is probably the best awarded game activity aside from TP playing, that most scales in skill, just imagine the value of everything else besides it.

there is a number of ways to enact my suggestions to reward changes.
this will not be simple, and it will not be easy, but my feeling is the game will continue to have dissatisfaction, and lack of feeling of reward, as long as everything remains as it is, also TP playing will always be the dominant method of achieving anything with a gold value.

• Step 1: breakdown the game into various gameplay types: you wont get them all, but get the major ones.
  • 5 man instanced content (right now this is basically dungeons/fractals)
  • world exploration (id say this is mostly treasure chests and jumping puzzles, mini dungeons)
  • pvp (WvW and Spvp perhaps one day add GVG and dueling)
  • open world (mostly dynamic events, and boss events)
  • Social (grouping up, talking in chat, organizing events, special mini events in towns)
  • gathering (mining yellow animal hunting harvesting logging)
• Step 2, create different systems for tracking variable levels of success at doing each activity.
  • 5 man instanced content – instance ratings based on time to complete, deaths, enemies killed, special objectives complete, and competitions
  • World Exploration add events/quests where you can try for fast times, or try to hit a certain amount chests/locations, or hit specific locations/mini dungeons.
  • Open world-how many events can you complete, special objectives for certain events, bonuses for saving parts of the world,
  • Social- basically two type, cool guy and cool leader, based primarily on a vote up system. Can vote up anyone in the zone. Leader is limited to one vote per day cool guy is limitless.
  • gathering, various endurance/knowledge based tracking
• Step 3 create rewards that match each type of content, up to and including skills/traits/titles special toys etc, the only way in which these rewards are introduced to the game is through these actions

• Step 4 people seeking these rewards choose an option to turn off all other rewards from the activity (aside from say experience, maybe karma, except for social) They then get some tokens based on how well they succeed at whatever parameters. Lets throw a bit of random in there with chances of getting certain things without paying the tokens (So its less of a grind/more exciting)

• Most of the rewards you can buy with these tokens are sellable on the TP (or you can sell the tokens possibly)

I think this would solve the problems of incentives, while offering people gold, as an option to get these things without having to do the content they dont like. It wouldnt stop TP people from getting rich, but it would allow people who are really good at something, something of value to sell, or strive to obtain for themselves. Essentially a means to get rich by producing something people value, and can only get through targeted play
It would make the best way to play the game, and get rewards that fit yourstyle, be to play that specific content, and give depth.
It wouldnt inflate the market because in choosing to enter this mode, you no longer randomly produce items, at the same time the rewards would have value, because you are turning off your other rewards while doing this. People who arent interested in this progression, will not opt in, and be able to get most of these rewards through their normal playstyles, via gold, but the value will be determined by the demand, and the players who specifically produce the good.

Now the real issue i see, is one of incentives, and control of production.

One major factor is that TP earnings scale with skill/knowledge/investment noticeably better than other activities.

To make this less the case, you have to come up with systems that reward differently based on how skilled/invested you are in something.

Basically the reason everyone doesnt flock to TP, is two fold, some people are just averse to the TP style of play, and, the results are based mostly on skill/knowledge.

put the same requirements into other content, and you will see similar value for the items it produces

which brings me to the other factor
Production of these rewards MUST be intentional, or else you shouldnt be able to bring them to market. IMO a HUGE problem is that most players are given items unintentionally, that they have no use for, and must then sell them to get what they want. You cant change the past, but you can change the future. People need to be making a choice to produce these items, and then they will be a lot more interested in actually competing in sales, they will also leave markets that arent profitable enough for them, which is one of the keys to good supply/demand/value relationship. Players have little control over what they supply, other than choosing to vendor an item.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit, this is getting heated and it doesn’t need to be.

I want to go through a hypothetical to explain a point about the TP.
Before I start I want to restate (it was quoted earlier) that the TP is part of the Tyrian world, we don’t make monster killing games here, we make online worlds (in which you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome).

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

That being said, I’m often reading and interested in hearing your suggestions and you should feel free to present them. There are a couple of popular suggestions that do not meet my requirements of not making the game a much worse experience:

1. Server specific economies. I can’t even begin to describe the myriad of problems that server specific economies have, but I will tell you, most of them are so bad, you don’t even realize that they aren’t in their natural state.

2. Binding after purchasing items – this has been thoroughly explained in many forums the several ways that this would prove disastrous.

My biggest argument I would make against myself is that the fix for this is simply education or more information (I don’t mean academia, I mean education inside the game). I would argue that people naturally want to make the most money possible and the amount of profit available is enhanced, not by laziness, but by a lack of information or education.

To which I would respond that players have many resources for information and while some portion of this may be caused by that issue, it seems clear that it’s much more a matter of preference than education.

I think both are good arguments, and the HOW of disseminating information is the interesting part.

ok, some people ahead of me have hit the nail on the head. While i think people know they are selling fast, they dont really know what the alternatives really are.
if when some one was looking at an item they got very clear info,

lets say they are shown, for an item they are selling,
Price: the average price item has been selling at
sell now price: with % difference in value (Selling to buy order)
lowest sell order price with % difference in value

now when they actually click sell, they get more information with average time of sell based on what number they put in the box

projected profit should include the fee AND the tax.

Items that can be crafted should show next to it, its cost to craft (much like gw2spidy) based on current prices of materials. and % loss to craft

I do think many players are making decisions based on kittenumptions.
sometimes the sell now price is incorrect, they dont know how long they would probably wait to sell the item normally (some times its literally seconds)
and they dont really know what the average value of these items are.

but thats not the big issue, ill cover that in another post.

Ayrilana.1396:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Ayrilana.1396:

Soloing dungeons is not efficient…
Rewards are not based on participants…

If you think gw2spidy does most of the work then you really have no idea what most flippers have to do.

The last paragraph is an opinion.

Soloing dungeons is the most effective way in PvE to make gold, since you can sell the slots left at the end.
And no, enlighten me what you have to do that gw2spidy doesn’t, except searching the database for the most efficient way to flip.

So exactly how much time do you think if takes to solo a dungeon? How long does it take to fill up a party? How much do they get from each person?

Think of it this way, if making a profit was as simple as looking up margin on gw2spidy, don’t you think everyone would be doing that and thus eliminating any profit to be made?

its not really that hard, but it is something many people are averse to. It is more than just gw2spidy, but gw2spidy cuts a great deal of the hard work out.

the dungeon soloing, is the most money THEY can make. Its only for select paths, but it pays out more and isnt on a daily timer.
And yeah it may suck compated to what TP people can make with skilled play, but thats kind of the point he is making.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

problem for HHR he feels the value of the merchant lifestyle outstrips the value of the adventurer lifestyle.

So first you have to ask yourself
is this true?
then you have to ask
should it be this way?
then you have to ask
If it shouldnt be this way, how can i change
if it should be this way, then dunno what to tell him.

i wont get into my opinion on the matter, though people can probably guess from my other posts

Is this true? No. Playing the TP is a valid way to play the game.
Should it be this way? Yes. The mechanics allow for it to be done. The API for the TP was released for this very purpose. Even in RL making smart investments, buying and selling stcok etc. is the BEST way to get “rich quick”.

Just because one person has a different perspective on an issue doesnt mean that that is the truth. It just means that that persons perceptive is flawed to what is widely accepted as truth. There is only one version of truth. Period. The world is round, but our perspective is that its flat. That doesn’t change the fact that the world is indeed round.

you misread the first question its not is the tp a valid way to play the game.

Its does playing the tp offer more value returned than playing other facets.

as for number 2, your reasoning for should it be this way, is that it is this way, therefor it should be this way. this is called circular reasoning.

now, im just pointing out flawed reasoning, and a misunderstanding of the question, not saying your answers should be my own, or his own.

as far as the “truth”
the truth is there are many truths, the key is to understand exactly what your a dealing with and isolate it properly from outside factors.

is the earth relatively flat compared to a humans size? yes
is the earth round relatively compared to the vast space? yes

interestingly enough, the main problem comes here when people try to apply different concepts/perspectives to the other perspectives.

Its essentially practically wrong, to say a road is round if its stays at sea level. however it is practically wrong to say a road is flat when viewed from a planetary scale.

Ill concede I misunderstood the first question. Does the merchant way outstrip the adventurer way? In terms of making gold, yes. In terms of value? That depends on what the individual thinks is valuable. Is it gold and having lots of it? Or is it running around with friends killing things and exploring? Thats a question that has an aswer as varied as the many people who play. However disparaging what another defines as value is not ok. OP doesnt like it so it must be shut down.

2. Not circular at all. The TP was launched, created, with flippers in mind. Again it should be this way, because thats how it was set up to be. Changing what it was supposed to do, provide a way for people to avoid farming, for a gold sink, and for people who enjoy flipping the TP a way to do that without harming the economy, would put out thousands of players, cause the economy to start doing horrible things, and general chaos would rule over Tryia.

Truth: I am a very black and white type of a person. Its difficult for me to even fathom grey areas. So I am coming from a position of there is really only one truth, and all else is false. This is a “failing” of mine (if you would like to call it that). Its just the way I am.

Prespective: I can see your point, but its still just a matter of perspective :P

not to get into a side thing, and i get the black and white perception, but its actually shocking how much science has found, things are sometimes objectively subjective. or in a more accurate term, relative.

Ayrilana.1396:

No. The purpose of his post is that he doesn’t think flipping is a legitimate way to acquire gold. The second part about the disparity between those that flip and those that do other activities in the came was just an opinion of his to support his argument.

See the bolded below:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

First off, I don’t see traidingpost flipping as legitimate way to acquire gold, especially not if it’s the most rewarding way to get gold.
One could say that traidingpost flipping requires some sort of skill but I think those guys are ruining enough in real life, they don’t have to be the richest people in-game too.
Those players literally don’t have to play the game at all to get almost everything, while players who are actually playing the game can’t compete with that volume of income.

Suggestion:
Add a new binding mechanic, in addition to account bound or soulbound, that prevent the reselling of items bought from the trading post and the reselling of items gathered/crafted/forged out of items which were bought from the tradingpost.

the goal of discussion is to find the truth, and come to understandings, Sure when someone steps into a forum they may mostly be filled with anger, and have some unreasonable views, the key is to find the real problem. then see if its one that can/should be solved.

like someone may start out talking to a engineer like, tall buildings are the bane of humanity.
through discussion and analysis, you may realize that his real issue, and ones other people keep bringing up without realizing it is,
tall buildings block the sun.
now as an engineer, i can say hmmm. i cant give up tall buildings, but perhaps i can come up with a technique so they do not block the sun, or one where they may block it but give the same feeling.

See if the goal is a debate to prove the ops initial post incorrect or correct, thats a different beast, but if the goal is to understand what the ops problems/misconceptions/issues are, and solve or elucidate them, then you discuss things, and adapt to the discussion.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Certain players like phys would probably love it if Anet gave more account bound rewards for content. But that wouldn’t satisfy the frivolous complaints where one player is angry that other players are rich.

John seriously needs to close this thread. We’re in an endless circle of kitten because the OP doesn’t understand what we’re trying to explain.

i dont mind if you can sell items, as long as the main means of getting it is through deliberate, targeted play. Then the sale price represents the value of the item as percieved by those playing the content, and those who dont want to play the content. It also gives you the option to opt out of the gold method of obtaining the item, and cut to the core.
i never had a problem with ambraces or ectos in GW1, even though people could trade for it, because i could go hunt them on my own, and get a pretty good value for that because the prices were set by people who specifically did that content, and came up with pretty fair numbers.

In GW2, these items are really only practically obtainable, and balanced, based on what the tp value is.

pdavis.8031:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

problem for HHR he feels the value of the merchant lifestyle outstrips the value of the adventurer lifestyle.

So first you have to ask yourself
is this true?
then you have to ask
should it be this way?
then you have to ask
If it shouldnt be this way, how can i change
if it should be this way, then dunno what to tell him.

i wont get into my opinion on the matter, though people can probably guess from my other posts

Is this true? No. Playing the TP is a valid way to play the game.
Should it be this way? Yes. The mechanics allow for it to be done. The API for the TP was released for this very purpose. Even in RL making smart investments, buying and selling stcok etc. is the BEST way to get “rich quick”.

Just because one person has a different perspective on an issue doesnt mean that that is the truth. It just means that that persons perceptive is flawed to what is widely accepted as truth. There is only one version of truth. Period. The world is round, but our perspective is that its flat. That doesn’t change the fact that the world is indeed round.

So how does an adventurer playstyle out-value merchant playstyle as phys put it?
And just because it can be done in the real word doesn’t mean it should be done in game. Neither is the “mainstream” opinion always the right one. And by the way, if you’re 2m above sea level, you can see 5,05 km wide until the earth’s curvature blocks your vision. So the world isn’t as flat as you may think it is.
And just because the “mechanics allow that” doesn’t mean its untouchable or unquestionable. ANet has stopped the champtrain because too many people had made too much gold with it. The traidingpost flipping is the same, just with less people who make more gold.

Just for clarity the champ trains werent stopped because of too much income. The trains were stopped because of the myriad of complaints, the toxic environment caused by someone accidentally killing a champ out of order, and the excessive amount of bots.

Also about the curvature, in order to see that you need to change your perspective (I.e. being in an open area or up high enough)

Also it would seem you missed the post about JS talking about this very thing.

JS post actually didnt answer his problem, JS is saying the TP flipping is valid means of playing the game, and he likes what it does for the mercantile engine.

but the OPs point as i see it is this.

The value returned from flipping is greater than other modes of play.

He doesnt think it should be this way.

JS, in that post didnt say he thought flipping should return 5-10 times as much profit over time as jumping puzzles, dungeons, or exploration.
JS didnt say that the main means of obtaining specific items should be the TP

and i think even if he did, thats something worthy of challenging. And it gets to the real core of the issue that these players have, which isnt so much about the mechanics of the economics, but the overall economic structure and where/how it leads the ingame society.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

it requires less patience in terms of profit over time. Ie, you have a much higher ceiling in terms of profit for skilled play in TP versus skilled play in PVP, or skilled play in PVE.

When playing the TP you don’t get loot drops, karma, AP, social interaction or anything else that the rest of the game offers. It’s simply a means to an end, the TP was set up to make it easier to trade items between players than it was in the original GW (spamadon) and it does its job very well.

It’s a legitimate part of the game, was created to be part of the game and is working as intended. None of your kitten-throwing is going to change any of that. Frankly, this song is getting a bit old, it’s time to change discs.

when playing the tp, you can buy loot drops, you also get social interaction if you want it, many a man in town flipping talking in general chat, or even talking about prices sometimes.
the TP legitmate part of the game, i never claimed it wasnt.
As far as changing it? they probably wont, its pretty good as a tool.
the problem is that economy as a whole, is built in a way that incentivizes TP play over other methods in terms of value gained per time spent. You will continue to get threads popping up who feel that the incentives should be placed elsewhere, and the TP should mostly be a means of trading value, as long as this is the case.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

problem for HHR he feels the value of the merchant lifestyle outstrips the value of the adventurer lifestyle.

So first you have to ask yourself
is this true?
then you have to ask
should it be this way?
then you have to ask
If it shouldnt be this way, how can i change
if it should be this way, then dunno what to tell him.

i wont get into my opinion on the matter, though people can probably guess from my other posts

Is this true? No. Playing the TP is a valid way to play the game.
Should it be this way? Yes. The mechanics allow for it to be done. The API for the TP was released for this very purpose. Even in RL making smart investments, buying and selling stcok etc. is the BEST way to get “rich quick”.

Just because one person has a different perspective on an issue doesnt mean that that is the truth. It just means that that persons perceptive is flawed to what is widely accepted as truth. There is only one version of truth. Period. The world is round, but our perspective is that its flat. That doesn’t change the fact that the world is indeed round.

you misread the first question its not is the tp a valid way to play the game.

Its does playing the tp offer more value returned than playing other facets.

as for number 2, your reasoning for should it be this way, is that it is this way, therefor it should be this way. this is called circular reasoning.

now, im just pointing out flawed reasoning, and a misunderstanding of the question, not saying your answers should be my own, or his own.

as far as the “truth”
the truth is there are many truths, the key is to understand exactly what your a dealing with and isolate it properly from outside factors.

is the earth relatively flat compared to a humans size? yes
is the earth round relatively compared to the vast space? yes

interestingly enough, the main problem comes here when people try to apply different concepts/perspectives to the other perspectives.

Its essentially practically wrong, to say a road is round if its stays at sea level. however it is practically wrong to say a road is flat when viewed from a planetary scale.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

you are forced to do the most effecient gold activities, if you want to get them in a timely fashion.

Playing the TP involves patience. If you want something to happen fastest, it’s going to require a limited selection of choices. For instance placing a buy order for Dusk at 600 gold is going to take longer than buying from a sell listing for 1000 gold. You’re saving time by spending more money.

it requires less patience in terms of profit over time. Ie, you have a much higher ceiling in terms of profit for skilled play in TP versus skilled play in PVP, or skilled play in PVE.

Razvan.9763:

I like sexy outfits, I do.

But… I really wish I could wear the male Shadow Assassin armor on my female character.

The open holes on the female version’s pants look odd and make me feel icky. I imagine that they were inspired by hakama pants which have an open space like that on the side, but that space has fabric when worn correctly.

I’m not complaining about any sort of historical accuracy. This is a fantasy game, that would be silly. I just don’t like the holes in the female pants. But there is more to this…

The difference between the male and female Shadow Assassin armor is so different. It feels like you could have made two different costumes available. (That’s more money in your pockets Anet with not much more work to get it done.)

Maybe a toggle and a bit of refitting so that male and female costumes could be worn by both genders? I’d pay real money for a gadget in the Wardrobe that would allow for changing the gender of clothing.

I’m so confused. I don’t understand fully why this particular costume bothers me so much, but it really does.

Attached are some roughly constructed examples of what I’d like to see.

(Other than this, I have been enjoying the game greatly! I think this is a great game. Good work!)

i dont think the pants have to not have holes, but you have illustrated your point well that they could in fact both be different armors.

I fully agree, that they should probably have both versions.

However, i think anet is more concerned with time at this point. Thats one of the reasons they want to do outfits now, because its less time splitting up the peices and seeing how they interact with other peices.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

What if the sellers complaint is that he would prefer a game where he wasn’t forced to behave like them in order to make use of the market feature of the game?

Then we wouldnt have to complain in GW2 because he is not forced to behave like them as the has the choice to sell and buy directly.

Awesome, isnt it?

you are forced to do the most effecient gold activities, if you want to get them in a timely fashion.

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Alright, I basically skipped the last 3 pages because it was all garbage. HHR, you need to get one thing through your understanding. The only reason the TP “provides the most gold for invested time” is because other players are more impatient than an ADHD kid on crack wanting a videogame. Their impatience means they sell to buy orders and buy from sell orders. It’s NOT because there’s something wrong with the TP, it’s that there’s something wrong with the PLAYERS.

You want to change the profitability of the TP? Educate the players instead. Clueless players will always complain. Informed players make the money. It’s just as easy as that to reduce the money you can make off the TP without touching the TP itself. Wanting the TP touched because you dont see fit to educate yourself and others on how to make the money work for you is dumb.

The problem with peoples solution, is not exactly that you are wrong, its that you are missing the point. Your solution is, get better at the TP, or get people to stop being fools on the TP.
The problem is, he doesnt want to feel like the only way he can achieve his endgame goals effeciently, is to play the TP.
If he can achieve endgame goals effeciently, without playing the TP, he wont really have a problem with people being super rich.

IE, the solution to the problem of wanting to be able to get things in game in an effecient manner without having to play the tp, cannot be to learn to play the TP,

So it’s a rewards problem and not a TP problem. But this goes back to the point that rewards are “new” money and items coming into the system where as profits from the TP is simply taking advantage of player’s need for immediate gratification.

rewards as i term them dont have to be money.
For example, if the main method of achieving precursors was for beating some hard series of dunegeons with no other rewards within a certain overall time limit, and then they ended up costing the same amount, the means of introduction would be through gameplay, the cost would be high based on how many people can do it, and want to sell someone else the item.

See the thing is, the people complaining, are generally complaining about incentives, and incentives are incentives, whether they are from tp trading or dungeons.

Because the TP merchanting game is so profitable, the incentives to do other content is relatively is low, while merchanting/tping whatever gold meta grind is high.
so you cant really seperate them, they are all linked to incentives.

imo, this imbalance incentives is the root of most of the tp flipper/richness debate.

which isnt to say i dont think the tp has some core problems, but the main focus for these specific anti tp debates is generally one of incentives.

As far as the bigger TP problems, my opinion is the major issues have to do with a lack of control of production, and everyone having to come to market to get things.

shion.2084:

phys.7689:

shion.2084:

I was thinking about this on the drive home. Consider a more GW2’ish case. So say you found out that a large country in Asia was suddenly coming online and going to be interacting with your market. Now lets say you know that as a result a large number of players will come online and want to make ascended items (legendary drops being what they are).

What good would a flipper who enjoys playing the market invest in? Lets say you figure maybe something like Ecto would be important to have. So what does flipper Fred and his mighty guild of banker brothers do? Why they start buying ecto up. They figure that new market is certain to want the stuff cause you need it in pretty much everything “good” and high level.

What is the effect of this speculation on average player Joe Schmoe? Ecto Rises in price considerably, now Joe isn’t a trader and hasn’t been playing the market game… so he doesn’t happen to have mats of it stock piled away. In fact he’d sort of like to buy 100 or so so he can ascend his ring and play a fractal.

However he looks for ecto and finds the price has gone up significantly because of the reasonable expectation of future demand. Because there are people who want to play guildwars the banker way and are stock piling the stuff as well as buying up existing supply. Now GW2 isn’t increasing the rate that the stuff is coming into the market, and the new players from Asia are not selling theirs because they need it and the stuff is so expensive.

Is the argument that everyone is unconnected and free to play the game there way and that the impact of people making money off of market trading for large volume profit does not at all impact the enjoyability of people who don’t want to engage in the activity for the sake of their personal use?

Incidentally this is all theoretical, I have no idea if ecto has gone up in price since the knowledge about China became well known. Nor do I know if people who play the market think like I do about it. I’m sort of interested to check now though….

I would argue that people whom complain about folks playing the banking for profit way could potentially say that their game experience was impacted in a negative way by speculators driving up costs on commodities to artifically high levels. Maybe this is what the nay sayers are concerned about? Is that a more reasonable way to put it?

Essentially to get what they want in a reasonable time they then have to start changing their game style to do the world boss circuit to salvage rares or other things that don’t really suit their interests. Whereas without these people they could have reasonably supplemented off the trading post?

this is a different side of the coin than is being presented, and it isnt incorrect, but in the long term they were going to be screwed anyway. The flippers smoothed out the curve by taking some supply from a time when it was more abundant, and supplying it at times it is low in demand.

So yeah you get price raises in anticipation.

however that kind of goes more into the effects of speculation.

there will also be times when the speculators cause huge spikes instead of smoothing out.

flippers generally do more predictable, consistent hustles, generally going for the sure thing.
for example, an item that they can buy daily for 10 gold, and sell for 15 gold.

It goes back to my original question about what defines a flipper I suppose. So someone who will hold on for a month is not a “flipper” then I take it. My game lingo is poor

lingo changes with time, but yeah the thing is, even though they are raising prices, if they are correct in the demand, they would be lowering it (in theory) by having supply higher in that emergency. but overall? they would be raising the overall prices by however much profit they make in exchange.

however, the value of this service isnt very strong unless you reach crisis levels, and even then buy orders will mitigate this,

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

tolunart.2095:

shion.2084:

So when you say flipping will result in “lower prices”… how do you mean lower?

He’s speaking in general terms, specific items may vary. But generally speaking, if there is a 10s difference between the highest buy order and lowest sell order, that represents 10s potential profit for a flipper. Usually several individuals start placing buy orders and bidding up the orders, then listing the items they buy and bidding down the sell orders.

So over the course of a day, the buy orders go from 10s to 10s1c, 10s2c, etc. til it reaches 12s. The sell orders go from 20s to 19s99c, 19c99s, etc. til it reaches a bottom price of 18s.

The gap went from 10s to 6s due to flippers competing with each other for sales. Those who are selling to the flippers get 2s more for each item, and those buying from the flippers pay 2s less for each item.

Flipping = better prices for buyers and sellers through competition.

if thats the theory, then its flawed, because if the flipper wasnt there, the buyer could have gotten the items at the flippers initial buy price. IE
player wants 7 silver for his widget, buyer is willing to pay 9 silver. eliminate flipper. and either the buyer gets it for 7, or the seller sells it for 9, or they meet in the middle.

When i sell on ebay, ebays fees dont make my prices cheaper, i basically have to include ebays prices in what i sell. If i didnt have ebay fees i would either get more money, or the seller would get a better deal.

Flippers give benefits to people who sell directly and buy directly. Your argument that flippers are bad for people who want to buy stuff with buy orders is flawed because as soon as someone puts in a buy order for an item, he steps into competition with the flippers and adapts the same modus operandi as a flipper, so he cant complain about them.

Yeah they are bad for the guy who wants to buy stuff with buy orders, exactly as you say, because they are competition.
they are bad for the guy who wants to sell stuff because they are competition

however, both sides ignore this because they are most likely the type of person who just wants things to be fast.
In general, they are not business men, or, the flipper leaves enough profit that its worthwhile to just say eff it, and keep moving.

at the end of the day, what im saying is the flipper isnt exactly bad, but he isnt really going to overall reduce prices, he is inserting himself into the equilibrium price. The main service he gives is smoother curves, (which can be bad or good for you depending on the situation) and liquid cash.

to be honest, in the current system, without flippers, the basic material sellers would most likely take the main hit, because often a buyer has a better idea what an item is worth (though not always)

but if suppliers were intentional, that would probably shift.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem I have with traiding post flippers is a simple one. I simply don’t like others to be richer than me, even when I actually play the game and they’re just sitting be the merchant, selling and buying stuff.

So thats the reason. You ARE jealous. Period. There really no other way to put it. At the very core of your argument is nothing more then simple jealousy.

Anything you say at this point isn’t really going to make ANY of your arguments have any merit.

Thank you for playing! Please come again!

jealousy as a motive force doesnt invalidate criticism.

A orphan kid being jealous of kids with parents doesnt invalidate his need/desire for parents.
A 60 hour working class man being jealous of the people who can afford to send their kids to ivy league schools does not change the fact even though his kid may be smart enough to go to that school, he cant afford it, and thus his kids options are limited.
A Woman being jealous of her husbands mistress doesnt change the reality that he is cheating on her and spending his time with another woman.

“lol you jelly”
“lol you mad”

is just a means of dismissing something and trivializing a persons understanding/opinion. Just because some one has an emotional response, or motivation, doesnt mean that whatever they say is automaticly invalid.

Basing an argument that a system that is in good working order is flawed because it’s viewed through the lens of jealousy does pretty make invalidate any arguments. It doesn’t however invaldiate thier feelings on the matter. Also the examples you give are diffrent kinds of jealousy. The orphan kid is jealous based on an emotional need, and a physical need, one that is very valid and actually has merit. He is missing something vital to life. The wife with the husband with a mistress, is also an emotional and physical need and also has merit. The man who works hard to provide for his kids is a very different form of jealousy. The man wants the best for his kids, so he works hard for it. He feels jealous of those who have the money, but is also DOING something about it. While is is primarily an emotional jealousy, there is an emotional need that needs to be filled, and there isn’t a physical need attached. I would say is of “less importance” (for the sake of argument) to the kids NEED and the wifes NEED to be loved by her husband.

The OP is simply jealous of the fact that other people have more money IN A GAME for doing things he either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to do. This is “petty” jealousy. There is no physical NEED, or an EMOTIONAL need that needs to be filled. I’m not trying to trivialize his emotional response to a virtual perception of an issue. It’s clear he’s upset about it and thats fine, he can be upset. NO one, not even myself is trying to dismiss that. I didn’t bring up the jealousy as a way to disparage the OP (if it came across that way I apologize) but rather to bring the heart of the matter to the light. For harboring such a jealousy WILL and DOES cloud every argument on the subject. The OP will be unable and unwilling (as he’s already shown) to accept anything anyone has to say. Everything related to the subject is filtered by that jealousy, and will be translated into an argument that only reinforces the position that the game is unablanced and unfair.

So in short, its not about the game being unfair, or fair, it’s more about an emotional issue than it is about anything within the game.

emotions are irrelevant to a logical argument(meaning it doesnt matter if they have high emotions if the logic is sound), it doesnt really matter what the cause is, what matters is that there is a problem
problem for the orphan, he want parents
problem for the wife, she wants fidelity/time
problem for the man, he wants to be able to send his son to the colleges he can get into

views against segregation were largely motivated by jealousy, and i dont think that they were wrong to be jealous, or wrong in their logic.

problem for HHR he feels the value of the merchant lifestyle outstrips the value of the adventurer lifestyle.

So first you have to ask yourself
is this true?
then you have to ask
should it be this way?
then you have to ask
If it shouldnt be this way, how can i change
if it should be this way, then dunno what to tell him.

i wont get into my opinion on the matter, though people can probably guess from my other posts

shion.2084:

I was thinking about this on the drive home. Consider a more GW2’ish case. So say you found out that a large country in Asia was suddenly coming online and going to be interacting with your market. Now lets say you know that as a result a large number of players will come online and want to make ascended items (legendary drops being what they are).

What good would a flipper who enjoys playing the market invest in? Lets say you figure maybe something like Ecto would be important to have. So what does flipper Fred and his mighty guild of banker brothers do? Why they start buying ecto up. They figure that new market is certain to want the stuff cause you need it in pretty much everything “good” and high level.

What is the effect of this speculation on average player Joe Schmoe? Ecto Rises in price considerably, now Joe isn’t a trader and hasn’t been playing the market game… so he doesn’t happen to have mats of it stock piled away. In fact he’d sort of like to buy 100 or so so he can ascend his ring and play a fractal.

However he looks for ecto and finds the price has gone up significantly because of the reasonable expectation of future demand. Because there are people who want to play guildwars the banker way and are stock piling the stuff as well as buying up existing supply. Now GW2 isn’t increasing the rate that the stuff is coming into the market, and the new players from Asia are not selling theirs because they need it and the stuff is so expensive.

Is the argument that everyone is unconnected and free to play the game there way and that the impact of people making money off of market trading for large volume profit does not at all impact the enjoyability of people who don’t want to engage in the activity for the sake of their personal use?

Incidentally this is all theoretical, I have no idea if ecto has gone up in price since the knowledge about China became well known. Nor do I know if people who play the market think like I do about it. I’m sort of interested to check now though….

I would argue that people whom complain about folks playing the banking for profit way could potentially say that their game experience was impacted in a negative way by speculators driving up costs on commodities to artifically high levels. Maybe this is what the nay sayers are concerned about? Is that a more reasonable way to put it?

Essentially to get what they want in a reasonable time they then have to start changing their game style to do the world boss circuit to salvage rares or other things that don’t really suit their interests. Whereas without these people they could have reasonably supplemented off the trading post?

this is a different side of the coin than is being presented, and it isnt incorrect, but in the long term they were going to be screwed anyway. The flippers smoothed out the curve by taking some supply from a time when it was more abundant, and supplying it at times it is low in demand.

So yeah you get price raises in anticipation.

however that kind of goes more into the effects of speculation.

there will also be times when the speculators cause huge spikes instead of smoothing out.

flippers generally do more predictable, consistent hustles, generally going for the sure thing.
for example, an item that they can buy daily for 10 gold, and sell for 15 gold.

“how often firms have the chance to change prices and production quantities.”

imo this is the hugest flaw with the economy and leads to many problems and failures.

firms (players who supply items) have little to no control over production(what items are produced, and how many are produced)

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

tolunart.2095:

shion.2084:

So when you say flipping will result in “lower prices”… how do you mean lower?

He’s speaking in general terms, specific items may vary. But generally speaking, if there is a 10s difference between the highest buy order and lowest sell order, that represents 10s potential profit for a flipper. Usually several individuals start placing buy orders and bidding up the orders, then listing the items they buy and bidding down the sell orders.

So over the course of a day, the buy orders go from 10s to 10s1c, 10s2c, etc. til it reaches 12s. The sell orders go from 20s to 19s99c, 19c99s, etc. til it reaches a bottom price of 18s.

The gap went from 10s to 6s due to flippers competing with each other for sales. Those who are selling to the flippers get 2s more for each item, and those buying from the flippers pay 2s less for each item.

Flipping = better prices for buyers and sellers through competition.

if thats the theory, then its flawed, because if the flipper wasnt there, the buyer could have gotten the items at the flippers initial buy price. IE
player wants 7 silver for his widget, buyer is willing to pay 9 silver. eliminate flipper. and either the buyer gets it for 7, or the seller sells it for 9, or they meet in the middle.

When i sell on ebay, ebays fees dont make my prices cheaper, i basically have to include ebays prices in what i sell. If i didnt have ebay fees i would either get more money, or the seller would get a better deal.

http://economics.about.com/od/market-equilibrium/ss/Supply-And-Demand-Equilibrium.htm

i know about that, and i read it again to see if it had any hidden jewels, i dont see any relation to flipping. In fact according to the part that you linked, the equilibrium price cannot be altered signifigantly, which means a middle man stepping in can only reduce either the profit of the buyer, or the seller or both.

JS however says, that you shouldnt go by the textbook in this case, because the trick to the flipper has to do with what happens when things are out of equilibrium.

Which means it really was pointless to link that page, as our discussion is occuring outside of that situation

Aidan Savage.2078:

Alright, I basically skipped the last 3 pages because it was all garbage. HHR, you need to get one thing through your understanding. The only reason the TP “provides the most gold for invested time” is because other players are more impatient than an ADHD kid on crack wanting a videogame. Their impatience means they sell to buy orders and buy from sell orders. It’s NOT because there’s something wrong with the TP, it’s that there’s something wrong with the PLAYERS.

You want to change the profitability of the TP? Educate the players instead. Clueless players will always complain. Informed players make the money. It’s just as easy as that to reduce the money you can make off the TP without touching the TP itself. Wanting the TP touched because you dont see fit to educate yourself and others on how to make the money work for you is dumb.

The problem with peoples solution, is not exactly that you are wrong, its that you are missing the point. Your solution is, get better at the TP, or get people to stop being fools on the TP.
The problem is, he doesnt want to feel like the only way he can achieve his endgame goals effeciently, is to play the TP.
If he can achieve endgame goals effeciently, without playing the TP, he wont really have a problem with people being super rich.

IE, the solution to the problem of wanting to be able to get things in game in an effecient manner without having to play the tp, cannot be to learn to play the TP,

Schizo.1375:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I wrote this thread because traiding post flipping is unfair, because it breaks the normal time-spent/reward pattern.

I can make 3-4 gold in about 45 minutes doing dungeon running. To prove your claim about flipping granting more money in less time I challenge you to make 3 -4 gold only using the TP in the same amount of time. You must do this immediately, any research or TP browsing is considered part of your time. You cannot just empty your bank or collections tab. You can only use the gold you have and the TP. If you can make 3-4 gold in 45 minutes then we can continue this conversation.

The point is NO flipping and playing the TP is not easy or fast or cheap.

uhh are you talking about active time playing, or time of spending?

anyhow as far as that goes, i have made more money a day messing with the TP (not just flipping, but transforming) than running every dungeon path in the game in a day.
That said, its not something i would want to do repeatedly. I basically made a legendary in two weeks from no base materials(once i had the precursor),

Its not braindead easy, but its not that hard either. It does take up time, but it pays better.

So if this is the case, why do i complain and not just capitalize and make mass money playing the TP?

The problem is it made me not want to play the game, and started distorting the value of the items i was pursuing (in my mind)
first mind set, everytime i do a dungeon, or farm, was how much i could or should be making on the TP, or if my orders filled.

Then you get beyond that and its like, why do i even want this special item anyhow, i dont even fight anymore, i play the TP.

Then its like ehh why am i doing this again i dont even really want gold, i wanted that item, that looks cool when i play, only i dont play anymore.

anyhow that was my thought process, and usually by the end im like ehh never again.