Guild Wars 2

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.

interesting indeed

Chuo.4238:

I often wonder why the people who are so good at creating bucketloads of wealth ingame aren’t out doing it in real life…

If I had that talent…yea

some are, but mostly its not as easy to get into, track, and the risk is real. A lot of people are super soldiers in game, but they lack the personality traits to do it irl.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I honestly can’t believe this thread is still going.

Didn’t any of you take economics in high school? I mean, even just basics?

Flipping doesn’t need to be stopped. Nor do I see those people as doing anything wrong. If that’s how they enjoy playing, more power to ‘em. They’re smarter than me lol.

in real life flippers generally have access and knowledge, and hustle.
I sell to middleman, because he has access clients that i dont, he makes it his business to find buyers for my products. I also have a vested interest in keeping the value of product high. Its a very different relationship to the one we have in gw2.

basically the only thing they offer buyers is liquidity, and to sellers, possibly more average prices.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

I love how people can discount economic theory and principles because of differences in the game’s economy vs real life’s economy. Does this mean I can discount theory and principles of gravity on the moon since the moon and Earth are not the same?

These topics constantly pop up on these forums, and other games’ forums, largely because people lack knowledge about economics in general and how economies in games function. The former is understandable as economics is normally not taught in schools so most people are never formally introduced to it. However, one would think that if you were to enter into a discussion about it, that you would at least do a little research first.

Otherwise you run into these discussions where you have arguments based solely in personal observations and opinions that masquerade as facts of how things are or are supposed to be. If everyone did this in the real world then we would make no process but go backwards.

it means that the rules you created due to observation on earth dont actually match up many times to the rules in a different place.
But a closer analogy would mean the physics you apply on earth dont neccesarily match up to the physics that is applied to game.

Except that they do. These are very very basic principles. People lack the knowledge and understanding of them so they immediately discard them as being relevant to the situation.

aspects match up, but a lot doesnt, This is a simulation, its missing many key factors that drive certain economic principles and policies.
One very huge, major one, is that people create items without intent in this game. Another major one is that every item is exactly the same, Another major one is money is printed. Another major one, is the ability to buy gold with an outside source.
There is a huge difference between reality and this game, and even in reality there are multiple ways to skin an economic cat, and various highly educated people with very different solutions to the same problems, and theories.

Its essentially like trying to apply modern psychology to an AI meant to simulate humans. Some things will work because they designed it that way, but other things just wont.
And some people might wonder if you should even try make your AI simulate human psychology.

Ayrilana.1396:

I love how people can discount economic theory and principles because of differences in the game’s economy vs real life’s economy. Does this mean I can discount theory and principles of gravity on the moon since the moon and Earth are not the same?

These topics constantly pop up on these forums, and other games’ forums, largely because people lack knowledge about economics in general and how economies in games function. The former is understandable as economics is normally not taught in schools so most people are never formally introduced to it. However, one would think that if you were to enter into a discussion about it, that you would at least do a little research first.

Otherwise you run into these discussions where you have arguments based solely in personal observations and opinions that masquerade as facts of how things are or are supposed to be. If everyone did this in the real world then we would make no process but go backwards.

it means that the rules you created due to observation on earth dont actually match up many times to the rules in a different place.
But a closer analogy would mean the physics you apply on earth dont neccesarily match up to the physics that is applied to game.

Lukyromero.6780:

Okay so… over the last few weeks I’ve just started is to tp flipping for my legendary; I’ve done everything from dungeon farming; I know every gold making tactic there is from mystic forging to farming to EoTM and WvW to salvaging so please don’t suggest any of those; this is specifically for the TP. I keep reading in map chat that people are making like 60-300 g just by flipping but I only get like 5-6g from it. What I do is I order like 5-10 stacks of an item I see has a higher supply ratio than demand, I wait overnight and get what I receive and flip it back accounting for the 15% tax and stuff. Now heres what I don’t understand: what am I doing wrong? I even have a spreadsheet for projecting profits but each day I can only net like maximum 6g.

yeah i think he pointed you to this thread by accident, but i was gonna respond to the other post so may as well do it here.

Basically, you have to do it better.

Pick better items to flip since you apparently only want to flip once a day, look for biggest differential between buy orders and sell orders on a daily basis

Dont flood the markets you choose, which means diversify

look for other ineffeciencies in value other than just buy low sell high, these will usually end up pointing you to the higher velocity flips.

Think about flipping more than once a day.
Flipping a high velocity item multiple times per day will pay better than flipping once a day, even with lower margins
essentially you will make more money in a day
with ten 3% profit flips,
than you would with one 34% profit flip.

and make sure you are flipping appropriate to your investment.
While copper may be giving you a 20% profit, the amount presses and items you have to do to achieve that is huge, and more likely to imbalance the flipping market.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

They can easily sustain high end prices with 25% of the population on low supply items, somewhere to the tune of 5 times greater than what the bottom 60% might find reasonable price wise.

You mean when it comes to low supply, high demand items, most of them are bought from the TP by players who have a lot of money? Shocking!

It’s almost as though the players selling them want to make money or something… this is completely wrong and needs to be stopped immediately!

im not saying its illogical tulonart, Im saying it is logical. and based on that logic,

What would happen if a sizable group of people make a lot more than everyone else?
What would happen if a certain playstyle exhibited by 20% of the players earns 5 to 20 times more money than other playstyles?

As long as the wealth disparity grows, and high end items can only reliably be obtained through gold earning, its basically a done deal that items will continue to go further and further out of reach.

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.

Wanze.8410:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I really don’t know why you fixate on that reward diction thingie but as also stated more than enough, an imbalanced gold spread can be very harmful for every economy.
Also, every time when I explain why traiding post flippers have no (great) positive effect on the economy, all just keep saying “you’re wrong because they’re good for the economy”, which simply isn’t an argument.

Its not what I am saying but what John Smith said in earlier posts, here some quotes:

John Smith.4610:

It’s possible I’ve missed it and I apologize if that’s true, but I haven’t seen any evidence or even a correct hypothesis that a group of the rich can negatively effect your gameplay experience. I think a clear set of ideas would help me understand and respond to the issue.

P.S. Don’t say luxury goods or I will refer you to the first rule of the tautology club.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s stop discussing possible “solutions”. Before discussing a solution you must first prove a problem. I have yet to see any evidence internally or externally that there is a problem.

Speculation on player wealth is not evidence of a problem.
An anecdote is not evidence unless it demonstrates a systemic problem.

John Smith.4610:

2. I know you said it already, but I’ll restate, that prices of high end goods aren’t being controlled.
3. The prices of high end goods are VERY close, if not exactly the same, to what they would be without any “TP Barons” wanting those items. There’s too much velocity for individual rich people to influence the supply/demand equation all that much, which is the only control they have if they aren’t manipulating prices.

John Smith.4610:

Flippers increase liquidity and bring prices closer to equilibrium, almost always lowering prices and providing preferences to other players. I see no reason why anyone would want to stop that.

the problem is JS is talking about a class of super rich, in the tune of 1%ers, IE a couple insanely rich guys, but what if you have a plateau aristocracy, where the top 25% of players make 5 to 20 times more than the bottom 60%

They can easily sustain high end prices with 25% of the population on low supply items, somewhere to the tune of 5 times greater than what the bottom 60% might find reasonable price wise.

basically John smith was talking about individual rich people, not an upperclass, who would in fact have sizable effect on the price differential, more noticeable as that disparity grows.

and you can see the effects, high end items values grow at a faster rate than overall inflation.

Brother Grimm.5176:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

That is one of the reasons why speculators are bad: they make gold by draining other players gold.

So this entire thread is about anti-capitalism in general (because the above is pretty much a justification for any free market). Glad I didn’t waste my time reading all of it….

actually capitalism isnt supposed to be about draining money from others, its basically a theory that everyone will benefit from everyone competing to give each other goods and services.
But honestly capitalism doesnt really work on its own, its an idealized theoretical state that needs some measure of oversight in order to succeed. Uncontrolled capitalism is very volatile, and exploitive by nature.
But all of this is irrelevant, because our GW2 economy is too different from real world analogs, for things like capitalism to really exist in GW2.

hannah mee.7925:

Kal Spiro.9745:

hannah mee.7925:

Eh, it would probably cost more than that due to how much the gem:gold ratio would drop after so many gem purchases. However, yeah, it takes about $400-$500 to get a Legendary. Tbh, though, I would imagine if someone had that kind of money they aren’t playing Guild Wars 2…if I had $500 to spare, I sure as kitten wouldn’t.

What does your access to disposable income have to do with what games you play? I could drop $500 on a legendary if I really thought it was important enough. I just never would because of course it isn’t.

Having the kind of disposable income to spend $500 without seriously considering the ramifications just leans toward a wealthier culture. I’m sure they might still dabble in GW2, but with that kind of money I imagine someone would probably invest in something a bit more collaborative to, I don’t know, their social health? Belonging to clubs, theater and owning offsite vacation spots are just a few ideas.

It wouldn’t apply to everyone, obviously – but it’s apply to a majority. That agf crap doesn’t really fly on game forums.

Rich people tend to spend money, its actually generally reccomended to burn money if you want to be rich, because that feeds the desire, the pursuit of wealth and all the useless crap you can buy with it.

This is why rich people have fancier suits, more expensive clothes, the newest tech, Paintings worth millions.

point is, what does a rich person spend their money on? basically anything they please. Its not a big deal either way. They dont have to make choices, they can burn 500 on an item in GW, 1000 on some wine, 100, 000 on a car.

Your thought process is of a working class/poor individual, or someone trying to get rich.

Wanze.8410:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If you say that the traiding post is intended to give the highest reward you imply that the rest of the game is tailored around the traiding post, that every other activity in the game is there to fuel the traiding post and its flippers.
Basically the end of a game, the end-game, is that what should give the highest reward. All people try to reach it to get the best rewards. If now the traiding post gives the highest reward, the traiding post is the end-game, which means that anything else isn’t meant to be as effective as the traiding post flipping.
So all comes down to ANet’s design decision: What is the core gameplay they try to deliver? I really hope for the sake of this game that flipping the traiding post isn’t considered as “gameplay mechanic” or even as end-game. This leaves the question why it’s more rewarding than the actual end-game, speaking of high-level PvE (Dungeons, Fractals), PvP and WvW.

First of all you have the misconception that the tp offers rewards, which is not true.
The tp offers profits, which is entirely different. Rewards are generated out of thin air for completing tasks in game, profits are paid for by other players. Anet can regulate game rewards but it cant regulate profits, that is for the players to do.

Also many endgame rewards cant be bought with gold. The TP doesnt award experience, skillpoints, karma, badges, ascended mats, event currency, dungeon tokens, laurels or guild commendations.

Granted, Legendaries can still be bought with gold ( they shouldnt, in my opinion) but at least that gives players a way to make profit off their karma, skillpoints, tokens and map completion, should they chose to craft and sell one.
So someone who plays the tp all day cant get a single piece of ascended gear, dungeon skins, Living story or Festival meta and other rewards, Minis, backpieces, skins, cooking recipes and the new gear stats. No stuff for him from the guild commendation or laurel vendor, no AP chest skins.

So i think its fair to say that quite alot of andgame rewards cant be obtained through the tp.

I also disagree with your assumption that rich players are responsible for price inflation because their demand for shiny stuff compared to the general player base is miniscule.

I suggest that you, instead of arguing that something has to be done, make a suggestion on how to improve the status quo.

I think i remember you have done so a little in your OP, so i will read it again and make another post.

those are mostly midgame rewards, or rewards that require gold to capitalize on.
karma: mostly useful for picking up armor without gold, and some crafting mats: endgame use? requires gold to be used for ascended, and gold to be used for legendaries

Skillpoints: mostly used for skills, pretty good for gameplay, problems is, it has very little use, in a few cases it can be turned into gold at a pretty poor rate.

ascended mats have no use on their own. they are the easier part of the ascended equation by far. in order to use them you need gold.

dungeon tokens? well you can buy paths, but regardless, dungeon tokens arent really endgame, its more of a midgame goal, only like 3 dungeons are level 75+

laurels, are an attendance currency, i wouldnt call them endgame.

As for the rich not being enough to effect prices, that depends on how many “rich” people there are, how fast they can earn, and the demand and supply of the item.

if there is a sizable gap between 60% and 30% of the player base, any item whose supply is small enough that it can be marketed to those 30% consistently, will be, if the demand is there.

Im not saying they can or should change this(thats another debate), but regardless, it is the truth according to the system.

Brother Grimm.5176:

This is frankly just an inflammatory thread with no real reason to exist other than insight RNG hate directed at ANet….isn’t that a challenging prospect here?

The use of the term “deserves” directly relates to the generally entitled point of view that far too many players carry around like badge of honor.

actually i dont think the OPs point was rng, i think the point is designing rewards that incentitvize player behavior better.

And questioning what type of behaviors do you think they should incentivize. Apparently a lot of people have a problem with random drops
that said, i think some random is a good thing, when its targeted properly.

Vol.7601:

Why do people blame the economy when there are other factors that happened? Educate yourself about the updates since your 4-5 month break instead of blanketing everything because of flippers and rich people.

blaming the economy is correct, blaming flippers or rich people, is kind of pointless, they are just water following the paths set before them.

what i mean by blaming the economy, is that ultimately, the prices are high because thats what the economy can bear, and thats how an item with this current implementation will fit into this economy.

Im not saying people dont every try to manipulate, or control the market, but those are generally relatively short term, and would probably only allow them to get like 10% higher over a short period.

So yes, if you have a problem then the problem is the economy, its the price of precursors right now, is a natural result of the structures we currently have.

to be honest the art seems like its trying to do something they are usually good at, but failing, I see im not the only one who thought so.

Anyhow, i think overall the patch was decent, gave a better feeling and interest overall than most of the LS1 storylines, however. the rewards for the challenging achievements are kind of ehhhh poor.

that said, overall it doesnt really engage me in the GW2 world after its complete. Not a horrible start, but not a game changer.

voidwater.2064:

Rieselle.5079:

And the answer can’t be “Everything should be rewarding”, because that means nothing is – wealth is relative. Unless you prefer a game without an economy where everyone earns personal rewards.

Everything and nothing should be rewarding. I’d be fine with a game where every item is unlocked by default. The economy is just a sideshow, that’s not where my fun comes from. I don’t care how many NPCs, the legions of pseudonymous internet folk, have the same items as I do.

What i’m really interested in is fun, engaging, repeatable content. The game itself is the reward. For example, if I’m playing an FPS, I don’t play for loot, I play because the game is fun. Shooting down helicopters and attacking bases are interesting, hoarding hats and unlocking weapons are not.

Does one need to be paid to enjoy a game of basketball or chess?

yeah, actually a lot of people do. they have basketball tournaments, chess tournaments, i remember my father talking about how back in the day him and a buddy used to try to make cash traveling all over the place for chess tournaments.

I get your point, but its not really about loot, its about incentives. Once a game system incorporates reward into it, it has to be done consistently with the game design, or it messes up the game. If you have no rewards, you dont have to worry about that.

For example, once you decide to have a chess tournament with a prize. If you make it so that players get money based on how many peices they kill, you are messing up the game design.
The most profitable way to play now is to kill as many peices as possible. You change the very nature of your game with a reward structure that goes against the game design.

Say if in basketball you got paid more if you score with a defender, suddenly instead of trying for open shots, players are waiting for the defense.

point is, if you have rewards at all, it must be consistent with your desired game design

Behellagh.1468:

First, TP flipping can’t scale indefinitely due to simple supply flow issues. So no infinite compound interest for the rich.

Second, because just about all reward drops are random, the only way anyone can be sure to get what they need is buying it from another. Coincidentally there are a lot of players wanting to get rid of the stuff they don’t want and that’s the reason for the TP.

Now other than establishing vendor prices on dropped items which defines the low end, ANet doesn’t touch the TP other than getting their 15% cut to help limit inflation. Bits and sell orders are entirely player driven.

The reason flippers can make any money at all is because a disproportionately large number of players simply don’t care about maximizing their earnings/controlling their costs when using the TP. They want their money/item NOW. Doesn’t matter if it costs a few % more for the items they want or they get a few % less from items they are selling. They want the immediacy. And that is where flippers step in when the price difference is wide enough for a profit to be made. They are simply using the same options that’s available to everyone, but only with a different goal in mind. It’s no different than in the real world where small business’s deal with a supplier rather than going directly to each manufacturer. TP flippers use the player base who seeks immediacy to both farm for them and act as the supplier they buy from. They provide the immediacy that players are seeking by evening out availability of buyers and sellers throughout the day, the immediacy that they seem quite willing to pay for.

Something else you may be overlooking is that there aren’t just one flipper for each item. This means there is some over/under cutting which is what stabilize prices toward the equilibrium. Unless of course you think there are cartels of players cooperating in manipulating prices.

You want to beat TP flippers? Educate your fellow players and help deny TP flippers both their supply and customers. Otherwise nothing else you say or suggests matters. The TP serves it’s function by providing a free and open market for players to trade their unwanted drops and crafted items. Unlike selling to a vendor, every TP sale removes money from the economy to help control inflation rather than add to it. The fact that some players can choose to play a player merchant and earn an income from doing it, more power to them.

What if crafting was highly profitable? Would you then be upset at the player craftsmen then? Not everyone has to be an adventurer fighting the good fight in an MMO.

the fact that it doesnt scale infinitely is largely irrelevant, because it scales way higher than anything else.
maybe you run out of options at 500 gold a day (though i doubt it, you just have to work harder)
but 500 gold a day would be something like 16 times what someone would get running every dungeon path in the game, or 7 times as much as a farmer farming 10 hours a day.
so yeah, the fact that its not infinite isnt really relevant to the fact that its limits geometrically surpass other methods of earning

Also, one wonders why create an environment where players are basically trash collectors, and flippers are dump divers? It really does seem as if the Overall economy was made for flippers benefit.

offence.4726:

Bro dont tell me that the players have enriched since anet basically nerfed every spot in the game besides the farm train in EOTM , yea im not out of the loop even if im on a big brake. The tp prices are obviously controlled since 2 weeks ago the prices we’re twice lower then they are now.

It puts me off the game anywayz cba with this economy

the average guy got a little richer, the upper class dudes got a lot richer. The wealth disparity continues to grow, and these items are marketed to the upper class gold wise. Also the fact that nothing suggests precursor quests anytime soon, probably caused them to go back up to their higher price.

High end items will continue to rise at a rate higher than you can earn(especially if yu take a break), unless you start focusing on gold aquisition.

This is the system as the devs prefer it, based on the fact that they have not changed it in 2 years

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

The game is all about gold because very little in the game at level 80 isnt about getting gold.

Means to an end vs. ends to a mean. Everything about the endgame for ME is not about gold because you need very little gold to do any of the endgame content. It’s all balanced around gear that is obtained EASILY by the time you reach 80. I believe this is the mindset players need to have to adopt and enjoy GW2. It’s not a ‘goldchasing’ game because you simply don’t need huge piles of gold to play and be successful.

You can’t make generalized statements based on your perception of game rewards/economy and claim it’s ‘wrong’, unbalanced or whatever. Well, I guess you can, but you don’t really have alot of people that make a difference taking you seriously when you do.

nevermind Obtena, if it works for the devs, its thier game, they can do whatever they want. I said my peice.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

The real point of this thread as i see it is, Someone feels there is an unbalance in rewarding tasks, that seem to have a bias towards one type of gameplay over others, that the poster feels adds disproportionate value to the game as what that it takes away in his opinion.

The real response to this thread is that you won’t get a ‘balance’ between rewarding tasks in an MMO because that’s a matter of opinion. If that doesn’t satisfy, better not play MMO’s where there is more than one way to play.

If you were a designer, i would walk away.

Rewarding tasks are not a matter of opinion, you can do an equation to figure out how rewarding a task in, you can define it various terms.

That’s what GW2 is. Rewards are VERY defined. I know what rewards I get for doing task X. I know I get a different reward for doing task Y. Just because you don’t agree that the relative reward differences between X and Y aren’t inline with what you think they should be doesn’t make them unbalanced. That’s simply an opinion.

This is simply a matter of players expressing their jealousy … he has more gold than me, nerf his approach to earning gold.

its not really about gold, its about value gained per task. I often use gold as measure of that because this game is very gold heavy.

It is really about gold because almost everything you get from doing content in this game has a value related to an amount of gold. Even those tokens from dungeons have gold value because they are used to buy gear that is comparable to gear purchased with gold.

in this you are correct, in GW2, it really is about gold, and thats why people get into these big debates on what task is the most rewarding or should be the most rewarding, because once you accept that its about gold, all forms of play can be broken down to how much gold they earn, and then you have a degrees of playing the game right, if you have any of the endgame items/services as a goal.

There is no ‘acceptance’ of the idea that the game is all about gold unless you CHOOSE to do so. If that is the case, then you CAN’T complain if there is an optimal approach to earning gold because I’m certain that when the devs sit down to make content, they don’t start with the idea that it’s going to be about chasing down more gold.

The game is all about gold because very little in the game at level 80 isnt about getting gold.
I complain because the the methods of getting gold effeciently arent very fun, and getting gold is the only thing to do about 2 weeks after you hit 80
If the devs dont sit down and think they are making gold heavy content that is surprising, because almost everything is based on gold grind.
I actually did the gold grind, i made 2 legendaries, i could make one more, but ehhh, to much grind with too little fun things to do in order to get another one.

Of course, this may not be the game for me, as you have said many times, that solidifies with time. I hope you will be wrong on that front, but ehhh no big deal really.

CureForLiving.5360:

phys.7689:

yeah they never did have a what to expect in 2014 blog like they said they were going to do after ls1 ended I think essentially arenanet hates being held to deadlines with a passion. Thats why they dont like to say anything.

And because of threads like these. Just think OP wouldn’t have had anything to complain about if ANet had been this quiet from the start.

Brother Grimm.5176:

There were never ANY promises on WHEN crafted precursors would be released. Granted, they indicated they were aiming for 2013 and they are obviously behind schedule on this, so an inquiry is justified.

However, anything they say on the subject (short of an announcement it’s going to be in the next release), is just fuel for the continual “Anet lied to us!!!!” fire, so I can’t really blame them for saying nothing until it’s ready for release.

My theory as to why we hardly ever hear anything anymore.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Mesket.5728:

Well,… GW2 is a big boy and handles itself now… NCSoft puts all his attention on his newborn WildStar. I won’t expect much improvement in this game from now on.

Actually, if NCSoft loosens its “grip” on GW2 a bit, that could be a very GOOD thing in terms of development direction and pressure to be the cash cow of the company.

This is still just a theory as far as I know. It’s player speculation which in the absence of official comment has become the community’s common truth: NCSoft is squeezing the life out of ANet. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, I just know no one has proof.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Lethalvriend.1723:

I think posts like these are the reason they didn’t put a roadmap up like last time, people take the list as if it’s set in stone the moment they read about it. They have already implemented alot of requested features etc, it’s just a matter of time. They aren’t as big as Blizzard or something so they have to push certain things further down the list.

Not being as big of a company is no reason to not have a roadmap.
It just means you don’t put as much stuff on it. Leaving customers in the dark is bad business.

Oh I’m sure they have a roadmap, just not sharing it. See this thread and so many other’s for a possible reason as to why not.

Palador.2170:

There’s two ways to deal with this: say as much as you can, or say as little as you can. Having seen a company try the first approach, and seeing ANet doing the second, I’ve got to say I like the “as much as you can” way better. I doubt ANet will change, though.

/shrug

They were vocal for a while, but that didn’t work out it seems. Unfortunately I can’t speak for ANet and as such I don’t know if the current approach is very effective or not (from ANet’s perspective). I do know from a player perspective I’d prefer they say a lot more.

phys.7689:

i thing you publicly announce is expected to occur. And not announcing anything is not the proper answer to the equation, the proper answer is to deliver.

And so we go full circle. They don’t announce things because people expect them to occur even if announced simply as a possible implementation or something they might look at in the future. If they don’t announce they can deliver without people complaining.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

It’s been a year since all those promises and… nothing really looks promising anymore.

If anything one of the continuing themes in this thread was that there wasn’t any promises.

the answer is to announce them and implement them. The problem with precursors were there 3 months in, and they are still there today. But eh whatevs, im not throughly enaged anyhow, no sweat

Wanze.8410:

phys, you can complain to your hearts content in these topics about reward structures but as already mentioned, nobody from Anet will read it if its buried in a complain topic about the tp.

i will test your theory.

Rieselle.5079:

Edit: Lol, it appears that I have asked the question in too subtle a manner.
What I’m actually asking is, “What kinds of activities should ANet make rewarding, and what should they make not rewarding?”
And the answer can’t be “Everything should be rewarding”, because that means nothing is – wealth is relative. Unless you prefer a game without an economy where everyone earns personal rewards.

---

Here’s a philosophical question for you all.

Who deserves to be rich? (in GW2)

Let’s accept that GW2 is a game with trading, money and scarce items (as opposed to say, an FPS where you build up points to unlock weapons on your account, and everyone has the same menu of unlocks.)

So what type of player, in your opinion, “deserves” lots of money? “Deserves” the precursor, the legendary?

In other words, what activities in the game should be well rewarded?

- Is it the person who spends a lot of time farming? (and bots)
- Is it the person who plays with the market?
- Is it the person who completes extremely difficult content? (ie. 1% of the population)
- Is it the person who got lucky on an RNG roll? (and spent 1000’s of gold rolling over and over…)

---

Personally, I feel that only two types of activities should be well rewarded:

• Skillful activities.*
  Winning PvP tournaments. Being the first to reach a deeper level in Fractals than anyone else. Getting top score in some kind of dungeon Hard Mode speedrun ladder. Completing all jumping puzzles, etc.

Skillful activities are things that are difficult to do. Not everyone can do them, and in fact, some people may never be able to. But they can try, and maybe get some consolation prizes along the way.

• Once-off activities.*
  These are things that you can only get once in a playthrough of the game. (whether you can do reset/loop and start from scratch is up to the designers.)
  Map completion, attempt all jumping puzzles, finish the storyline, complete all dungeon story paths, win your first PvP match, etc.

I like these because they give you something to work towards, without being abusable over and over. They also tend to spread out your gameplay – rather than farming a single area over and over, getting your Precursor via map completion (for example) will take you all over the world.

These are rewards that anyone can get, with a bit of time. Still, that does mean the items are not as rare anymore. If you could get a Legendary via map completion, then most people would have one. But would that be a terrible thing?

---

Who do you think deserve to be rich?

i think first of all you should break up wealth into different types of wealth.

Everyone should deserve to be “rich” within thier baliwick. Their “wealth” should reflect the type of gameplay they are good at.
The trade in value on that wealth should be determined by the market.

So what needs to happen? all major forms of content need more depth, for some content this may be challenge, for other content it may be dedication, for other content it may be results, for other content it may be ingenuity.

People like to feel good at something, they like either be able to get better at, or do what they like a lot. They want what they like to do to be valuable, and hope that what they do can make them better at what they do.

“Wealth” shouldnt just be about gold, rewards shouldnt just be about their gold equivalence.

lets say for doing some mining activities, you unlocked new mining utilities/traits like swiftness time per item gathered, targeted boosts to specific items occuring on mining success, ability to see phantom nodes which move everytime you zone, node hot and cold meters, etc. Random chances to get ascended metals. Random access to hidden mining areas.
Now this miner would be wealthy in terms of his ability to mine, and would get more value out of mining in the same time frame as someone else.

wealth in terms of hunting treasure chests might be different, wealth in terms of running dungeons would be different. Wealth for event organizers/community organizers would be different.

If you just make one type of gameplay the defacto most rewarding, many people will flock to it, or feel like they have to do it to succeed. By making each type of gameplay rewarding in different ways, and having depth, you will have people choosing the things they are best at, or enjoy more. And since the type of rewards they can get for doing it fit the type of play they enjoy, they will be happier, even if they arent actually running around with gold bags

Zackie.8923:

Galen Grey.4709:

ohh my god, this is going to be a challenge but I’d try. Super summary more details at:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1

Spoilers below obviously.

The story of S1 is about Scarlet, a sylvari that wants to break free from the Pale tree. She is quite intelligent and scientifically curious. She explored a lot of different disciplines until finally she met a asuran genius called Omadd.

Omadd built a machine which scarlet used to peer into the eternal alchemy itself. Scarlet emerge mad / possessed (we’re not entirely sure perhaps a bit of both). She killed Omadd and embarked on a plan to free all sylvari from the pale tree’s influence.

She started by making alliances first with the dredge and flame legion. Then with pirates and the inquest and finally with the nightmare court and the krait. She used these alliances to cause chaos around tyria and distract people from her true motive which was finding the right layline nexus.

Ultimately she locates the layline nexus right under lion’s arch. She launches a full on assault using all her resources on Lion’s arch and she also used a massive airship she created called breachmaker to drill her way to the layline nexus. We fought back and after a big effort manage to infiltrate the breach maker and kill scarlet but not before the breach maker disrupted the layline. Turns out Scarlet’s plan wasnt to harvest / use the power of the layline but just to disrupt it as this disruption cause an elder dragon to wake.

Thats the story in a nutshell. There were other side stories and lots of detail and character development that I left out of course more details can be found in the link I provided.

sweet summary

you lied, that was a lot of words

you already bought it, why not give it a go

wvw, they got some nigh unkillable builds now, they will become the ultimate in undying. But i guess you can just get like 20 people to focus them.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

phys.7689:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I would challenge you to find one game on the market where people who play the in game TP/AH aren’t the richest players in the game.

All other in-game activities create wealth, the TP/AH distributes that wealth. Increasing the gold making potential of other activities only makes the TP/AH players have MORE money.

The problem boils down to one of people. The business minded and smarter players will always have more money than the less so players. This will not change no matter what you do. People want to be equal in an unequal world, and it just won’t happen.

too be clear this isnt about gold, its really about rewards, or value gained per gameplay type.

hmm, i think the big difference is, being the richest player in the game wasnt that important. While being rich gave you definate advantages, it wasnt really the primary way to progress.

My example would be FFXI, the richest players were money minded, but the most powerful players in the game were more focused on completing difficult content, or organizing a guild that could compete at content.

The most expensive items in the game were hunted, or gotten via boss battles, or open world content or instances. These players were of course very rich, but probably not the richest. They were the players that could gather people to do hard events, special raids, hunt rare monsters, etc. I remember our group hunting a NM, getting the kill, and getting like 1 million gil for an item (in GW2 terms lets say that as a 800 gold item)

I was known for being a super poor player, but i was also known for having some pretty good gear compared to other players who started around the same time, mostly because i had a lot of the good gear you can get through content, and went on many a deadly adventure that should have gotten me killed. Thats not really the case in this game, you either grind easy stuff, or you play the tp, and that gets you the in demand items.

i dont think the problem is rich players getting rich, that will always be the case, anyone who focuses on something will obviously do better at it than other people. The problem is gold is the only way to obtain these things with any sort of reliability.

you want a precursor? grind gold to buy from tp, or grind gold to gamble in forge, you want ascended? grind gold to get crafting materials, or grind materials (which turns out to be the case that grind gold is actually better than farming the items) you want special mystic forge skin? grind gold to get items, trying to get these items via drops is slower than grinding gold and buying them.

and i think this is mostly because every item is given out fairly randomly, people can rarely make a choice as to what they want to hunt, (hunting any specific item directly is almost always the least effecient means of obtaining it)

Ahh ok, now we are on the same page. I would agree with that. The problem is that GW2 was designed and built around gold and crafting. BAsically they wanted everyone to be able to make their own stuff without having to spend a lot of time doing something they didn’t like. This worked well in that sense but it led to the current situation where everything is easier to obtain by using gold instead of getting it yourself.

The rewards are currently the bi-product of gold making activities, where as imo the gold should be the bi-product of reward making activities.

I think it boils down to design philosophy and GW2 was designed with casual low skill players as the focus. They can’t introduce high skill cap reward based gear like in other games because it would alienate a large portion of their player base. People already complain about Lindari and Wurm even though these are relatively low skill achievements by MMO standards.

However there are new “elite achievements” coming with the story journal, and they may tie in rewards with skill. We should know more later today, though it may be a step in the direction you are looking for.

yes, i realize why they made this choice, i just think it clashes with a lot of peoples desires in an mmorpg. I think it sounded good on paper, but the end result is that once you get high level, your main focus is earning gold, not adventure. You can still adventure, it just wont get you much closer to any item/reward/progress.

That said, i dont think all of this content needs to be super challenging(though some of it can be), it just has to be deep, something you can sink your teeth into. Dedicate yourself to, and have a marketable skill, or playstyle that has good value gained. I think tp players have a rather deep minigame, though i dont like playing it super often. I dont think other game types offer that type of depth, and definately not that type of value gained.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

The real point of this thread as i see it is, Someone feels there is an unbalance in rewarding tasks, that seem to have a bias towards one type of gameplay over others, that the poster feels adds disproportionate value to the game as what that it takes away in his opinion.

The real response to this thread is that you won’t get a ‘balance’ between rewarding tasks in an MMO because that’s a matter of opinion. If that doesn’t satisfy, better not play MMO’s where there is more than one way to play.

If you were a designer, i would walk away.

Rewarding tasks are not a matter of opinion, you can do an equation to figure out how rewarding a task in, you can define it various terms.

That’s what GW2 is. Rewards are VERY defined. I know what rewards I get for doing task X. I know I get a different reward for doing task Y. Just because you don’t agree that the relative reward differences between X and Y aren’t inline with what you think they should be doesn’t make them unbalanced. That’s simply an opinion.

This is simply a matter of players expressing their jealousy … he has more gold than me, nerf his approach to earning gold.

its not really about gold, its about value gained per task. I often use gold as measure of that because this game is very gold heavy.

It is really about gold because almost everything you get from doing content in this game has a value related to an amount of gold. Even those tokens from dungeons have gold value because they are used to buy gear that is comparable to gear purchased with gold.

in this you are correct, in GW2, it really is about gold, and thats why people get into these big debates on what task is the most rewarding or should be the most rewarding, because once you accept that its about gold, all forms of play can be broken down to how much gold they earn, and then you have a degrees of playing the game right, if you have any of the endgame items/services as a goal.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

not disagreeing with you, but the problem is that eventually noobies become level 80, whether they are casual or not. And this is the point where people are like oh snap, wtf. When they realize that the game is no longer about exploring the world, doing dungeons, getting karma, or whatever their old goals were, The goals are now dominated by how much gold you can earn, the best method of obtaining these items is to either become a merchant, or to grind easy content repeatedly. Its not really how you played before, and for a lot of people it isnt that entertaining. Not to mention, the grind required is often huge.

That’s such a load of garbage. The game is whatever you make it. Goals are only dominated by gold if you MAKE it your goal for something that requires it. All that endgame content you mentioned is done with exotic gear … which literally falls in your lap if your exposing yourself to various activities. Gold does NOT have to dominate people’s goals once they hit level 80. That’s simply your perception.

What makes your perception even more nonsensical is that you get gold whether you want it or not by doing all those activities.

aside from fractal weapons ascended accesories and dungeon EQ, all the endgame items primary blocker is gold.
infinite light? foe fires essence? ascended gear? legendaries? inventory expansion? cultural armor? non fractal ascended backpeices? transmuting items?

and yeah those activities give you gold, at an abysmal rate. and not much other value to boot.
go compare value gained per time completing a map to value gained in EOTM or TP flipping, or running 3 easy dungeon paths.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

The real point of this thread as i see it is, Someone feels there is an unbalance in rewarding tasks, that seem to have a bias towards one type of gameplay over others, that the poster feels adds disproportionate value to the game as what that it takes away in his opinion.

The real response to this thread is that you won’t get a ‘balance’ between rewarding tasks in an MMO because that’s a matter of opinion. If that doesn’t satisfy, better not play MMO’s where there is more than one way to play.

If you were a designer, i would walk away.

Rewarding tasks are not a matter of opinion, you can do an equation to figure out how rewarding a task in, you can define it various terms.

That’s what GW2 is. Rewards are VERY defined. I know what rewards I get for doing task X. I know I get a different reward for doing task Y. Just because you don’t agree that the relative reward differences between X and Y aren’t inline with what you think they should be doesn’t make them unbalanced. That’s simply an opinion.

This is simply a matter of players expressing their jealousy … he has more gold than me, nerf his approach to earning gold.

its not really about gold, its about value gained per task. I often use gold as measure of that because this game is very gold heavy.

my opinion on the matter is my opinion, but it is not an opinion to say.

EOTM gives this much value per playtime maximum
Dungeon running gives this much value per playtime maximum
TP playing gives this much value per playtime maximum.

there is also targeting rewards, people feel more satisfied even if they get the same value per playtime, if that value is targeted at something they specifically want.

most people would rather get a car, then get a bunch of random items, they can sell on ebay and when it all sells they can buy a car. When the ebay method is the only way to get a good car, being a racecar driver is more about being a master ebay seller than driving cars.

Azrael.4960:

phys.7689:

Azrael.4960:

The fundamental mistake is comparing the Trading post to a stock market. The TP is more a commodities market. If you look at it that way it makes more sense. Flippers are more in line with speculators.

Regardless of how you look at it every game has an in game economy, formal or otherwise. Using it to bring in an income to fund your in game activities has been the mainstay of all of these games.

The OP’s suggestion is ridiculous as that would drive up prices not bring them down. Under their idea, in order for the prices to even be held static, the same quantity of items removed from the TC would have to equal the volume being put in. This is just not going to happen.

What you see as illegitimate is actually a very legitimate way of playing the game. You go off into the world and hoover up vast quantities of materials, weapons and gold then sink it into the TC or merchants. Adventurer’s gold is created more or less out of the air and as such, there is effectively a limitless supply of it. What does a limitless supply of currency cause? Inflation, then hyperinflation.

Flippers are a necessary part of the in game economy. They’ll will do dungeons, sell Arah paths, gather mats, and all the stuff that anyone does but the gold they earn from that is sunk into the TC, which acts to keep the economy balanced. They earn a great deal of gold, this is true but 5% fee also acts to remove a great deal of gold from the market which in turn helps control inflation. Even pulling a number out of the air, one could consider that 100s of thousands, if not millions of gold are sucked out of the economy by flipper trading.

Remove flipping from the game and you’ll destroy the economy

an economy is like an ecosystem, yes you would destroy it, but something else would undoubtedly spring up in its stead, the question is, would what comes be better? maybe not, but honestly the economy we have is not really that good. Many goods services, tasks have no value, or low value, the ones with high value end up being degenerative.

And although flippers do keep inflation down somewhat, they also increase the wealth disparity, after all what a flipper essentially does, is either skim money off the item creator, or the item user, or both. they basically make everyone else poorer to make themselves richer.

so they arent really a slam dunk in terms of benefits to the economy.

Allow me to try to keep the discussion within the scope set by the OP’s suggestion.
The in game economy is a microcosm in a sealed environment. The real world economy fluctuates here and there, market corrections and crashes, but it reacts, evolves and moves on. The GW2 economy doesn’t really have the luxury as it exists within a framework of largely inflexible rules.

So within the bounds of the OP’s suggestion, removing that form of income must be replaced by Anet with another form. Grey market trading isn’t really an option and there’s just too much room for abuse.

Wealth disparity will always occur in any MMO, this is simply unavoidable, particularly when one is able to convert real cash to in game cash. Fortunately, in gw2 the check on huge personal wealth having a massive effect on the economy is relatively minimal. A stark example of wealth disparity, in my experience, was caused by the ill fate auction house system in D3. Hardcore farmers amassed fortunes in the billions of gold while casual players puttered around with maybe a million or so if they weren’t bankrupted by repair costs. This led to a system where the items one needed to keep going was completely out of reach of the casuals. This was made worse by the way the game difficulty scaled. At least in GW2, the expense of precursors, at least to newbies, is offset by the fact that they’re not necessary to progress in the game.

not disagreeing with you, but the problem is that eventually noobies become level 80, whether they are casual or not. And this is the point where people are like oh snap, wtf. When they realize that the game is no longer about exploring the world, doing dungeons, getting karma, or whatever their old goals were, The goals are now dominated by how much gold you can earn, the best method of obtaining these items is to either become a merchant, or to grind easy content repeatedly. Its not really how you played before, and for a lot of people it isnt that entertaining. Not to mention, the grind required is often huge.

eithinan.9841:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem boils down to one of people. The business minded and smarter players will always have more money than the less so players. This will not change no matter what you do. People want to be equal in an unequal world, and it just won’t happen.

This. So much this. In every mmo the less capable want what the more capable have.(in rl too) I play all facets of the gw2 game including the tp But I dont like grinding dungeon or fractals. The same repetitive PvE content bores me. I dont go in for any BIG money, I play the TP for some side money because gold in your wallet is gold that can be doing something. But I am positive that I have earned more gold through “proper” play than TP flipping.

Is mystic forging a precursor for the seed money proper play? Is stockpiling elonian leather until the price rises and then selling it proper play? I have done almost every ascended daily crafting every day even though i dont need the mats but I know I can sell them when the price is high. Is this proper? Please tell me how i should play so i dont offend your sensibilities. PLease.

Your feeling matter to me…Really they do.

problem is, in terms of effeciency, success, and what value you gain from doing it, what you are talking about is proper play. the other forms of the game give you less proper play. Once again, ill say i think the big problem with economy, is the inability of the user to create business or supply effeciently. When people can choose what they want to achieve, then gold is a means of exchange, and not an end in and of itself.

you guys always like to break it down to money, a lot of people are not money oriented. That doesnt mean they arent goal oriented.
IRL what you get out of it, isnt what you put into its or how skilled you are, its more about, can you monetize that?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I would challenge you to find one game on the market where people who play the in game TP/AH aren’t the richest players in the game.

All other in-game activities create wealth, the TP/AH distributes that wealth. Increasing the gold making potential of other activities only makes the TP/AH players have MORE money.

The problem boils down to one of people. The business minded and smarter players will always have more money than the less so players. This will not change no matter what you do. People want to be equal in an unequal world, and it just won’t happen.

too be clear this isnt about gold, its really about rewards, or value gained per gameplay type.

hmm, i think the big difference is, being the richest player in the game wasnt that important. While being rich gave you definate advantages, it wasnt really the primary way to progress.

My example would be FFXI, the richest players were money minded, but the most powerful players in the game were more focused on completing difficult content, or organizing a guild that could compete at content.

The most expensive items in the game were hunted, or gotten via boss battles, or open world content or instances. These players were of course very rich, but probably not the richest. They were the players that could gather people to do hard events, special raids, hunt rare monsters, etc. I remember our group hunting a NM, getting the kill, and getting like 1 million gil for an item (in GW2 terms lets say that as a 800 gold item)

I was known for being a super poor player, but i was also known for having some pretty good gear compared to other players who started around the same time, mostly because i had a lot of the good gear you can get through content, and went on many a deadly adventure that should have gotten me killed. Thats not really the case in this game, you either grind easy stuff, or you play the tp, and that gets you the in demand items.

i dont think the problem is rich players getting rich, that will always be the case, anyone who focuses on something will obviously do better at it than other people. The problem is gold is the only way to obtain these things with any sort of reliability.

you want a precursor? grind gold to buy from tp, or grind gold to gamble in forge, you want ascended? grind gold to get crafting materials, or grind materials (which turns out to be the case that grind gold is actually better than farming the items) you want special mystic forge skin? grind gold to get items, trying to get these items via drops is slower than grinding gold and buying them.

and i think this is mostly because every item is given out fairly randomly, people can rarely make a choice as to what they want to hunt, (hunting any specific item directly is almost always the least effecient means of obtaining it)

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

The real point of this thread as i see it is, Someone feels there is an unbalance in rewarding tasks, that seem to have a bias towards one type of gameplay over others, that the poster feels adds disproportionate value to the game as what that it takes away in his opinion.

The real response to this thread is that you won’t get a ‘balance’ between rewarding tasks in an MMO because that’s a matter of opinion. If that doesn’t satisfy, better not play MMO’s where there is more than one way to play.

If you were a designer, i would walk away.

Rewarding tasks are not a matter of opinion, you can do an equation to figure out how rewarding a task in, you can define it various terms.
it may be an opinion how people feel about it, but its not an opinion what the maximum gold earning potential of a task in, or a tasks ability to give a desired output over a time period, Or how many events it will take to achieve X goal. Or how much rewards something gives, versus an investment in time, setup, and learning curve in order to succeed at it.
A major facet of designing rewards (and thus the economy) in a game IS balancing it across different modes of play, and incentivizing gameplay which enhances the game.

And if the game continues on the current path i will also probably walk away, in fact i have not played actively in like 1-2 months, i pop in to check something and then log out. dont even do a daily or anything. I still give feedback, because i guess game theory entertains me, and i because i think the core of the game is pretty strong and still has potential. At this point though you are right, it is coming upon the time where the game wont change much from its established formulas, and if one doesnt like it, then they should move on to the next.

I would say, i guess what happens in the next 4 to 5 months will determine whether this game is something i can rock with or not.

Galen Grey.4709:

Precursor crafting is tricky business to implement and I am happy they’re taking their time to do it right.

Creating a legendary is a mega long term project and the precursor is probably intended to be 1/2 the work. If the intended timeline for acquiring a legendary is 12 months, work on precursor is intended to take 6 months. Easy/Quick way to do that? put some huge material requirements that will take 6 months to collect… Brrr scary stuff. I get chills even thinking about it.

Ideal way to do it? challenges that are hard to reach. Something like beating liadri after hitting her with 8 orbs for example. To do something like that however not only requires work on implementing Precursor crafting it also requires the creation and deployment of content that provides that challenge since really nothing we have in game currently is suited for such a task. Perhaps like someone suggested they’ve been waiting for the start of season 2 because they’re going to tie it with the difficulty based achievements they told us about already. Who knows.

we all want it, we all cannot wait for it to be implemented but its better to wait a bit more then have something thats worst then the current avenues we have to acquire precursors already.

i have thought that perhaps, they would link the precursors to the new challenge based achievements as you had said

buuuut i have thought they were going to do something with precursors many a moon now.
I guess we shall see in a few hours.

It would be a big step, the only problem is, living story seems like it will be way more personal now, which i dont object to, but it would mean players who want to work towards a precursor, will spend most of their time in single player modes.

add to that, it would mean someone coming to the game in say 5 months, would have to buy 5 months worth of past episodes to get their legendary.

Sooo i dunno, seems problematic.

Fenrir.3609:

It’s an mmo, a game which caters to a wide variety of playstyles. So no, it isn’t more “legitimate” at all and your basketball example doesn’t fit, surely you can see that right?

Could that be perhaps because it is entitled “Trading post flipping…” and because it is whining about the trading post…. It has been explained before why threads like this one (i.e. ones which just whine about the TP) would get moved to this section. Although it would be better if they just got moved straight to trash in all honesty.

I agree with this part, I don’t see how spamming up the BLTC forum with “waaaaah flippers!!” threads is going to resolve that issue however.

If it was sold as a overal MMO life simulator, i would agree, but it really isnt marketed that way
“Guild Wars 2 defines the future of online roleplaying games with action-oriented combat, customized personal storylines, epic dynamic events, world-class PvP, and no subscription fees!”

these are the main selling points of the game, the core of what its supposed to be about. according to the webpage.
It isnt just generic MMO, it is a action MMORPG. Its not the sims.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/
notice in this page it doesnt mention the trading post at all, or economic merchant competition, etc. In fact when they were talking about their plan for the trading post, it was supposed to be a really easy system designed to let you sell and trade your items easily without much concern while playing the game. It has become the focal point of endgame progression at this point.

look, if they had marketed or announced the trading post as being a central pillar of the game, and said that the real battle would be to become as rich as possible, i wouldnt make these comments, but it really isnt even a footnote on any of the advertising.
Im not saying it shouldnt exist, but its dominant.

I do concede that almost any thread with TP or economy in the title will get moved here, but if you are talking about rewards in general, you will have to mention the TP, as it is the main method of obtaining specific rewards in this game.

I take most of these type of threads, as the gut reaction when people dont like something. A lot of times, their solutions, or analysis may be off, or need to be explored, but the core of the issue is, The heavy market based nature of the game is not satisfying to them.

No one complains about the economy when they got a beautiful mate, kids they love, can build for tommorow, and a job they believe in. They complain when something feels wrong. They are dissatisfied, they think they know why, they may be wrong, but a lot of people are dissatisfied with the status quo. In a forum, the goal is to explore and discuss these things to see what has merit, and what doesnt, and see if as a group we can figure out what the problems that can be solved are, and what cannot be solved.

The real point of this thread as i see it is, Someone feels there is an unbalance in rewarding tasks, that seem to have a bias towards one type of gameplay over others, that the poster feels adds disproportionate value to the game as what that it takes away in his opinion.

and once again I would love if a dev would actually point us to the proper place to discuss these types of issues, but they tend to just move things based on keywords, and not content.

Revler.2359:

phys.7689:

Revler.2359:

Tengu monk would be cool

tengu martial artist monk? or tengu healer monk.
I am 100% behind tengu martial artist monk

Probably both, some weapons heal, others buff. It would be like a ranged light armor guardian

ahhh healer then,
dont think martial artist should be a healer.
and.. not really for healers anyhow, but to each thier own

solution is to make karma items salavge to produce karma, and wvw items salvage to produce badges.

Revler.2359:

Tengu monk would be cool

tengu martial artist monk? or tengu healer monk.
I am 100% behind tengu martial artist monk

Beldin.5498:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

While I agree adjusting and adding to a tool is programming – which isn’t actually doing any of the balancing work, it’s changing the tool to adapt to the needs of the balance team – an employee, say, typing 0.9 into a box labelled co-efficient, or 1 into a box labelled activation time isn’t doing any programming and doesn’t need any knowledge of programming.

To say so is just plain wrong. It’s like saying a person can do HTML because they used a website building tool.

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

Its just typing in numbers into a database. It doesn’t alter code. It just alters the result of some code.

Is the till girl at Walmart for you also a programmer because she types in numbers into a database ? And do you think she changes code because when she types in 10 +20 its another result than 5 + 15 ?

if those numbers in a database alter output, she is programming. This really is an aside, but you understand that programming, and code as you know it, is in fact exactly the type of thing you are talking about?
Programming gets more and more primitive the further down you go, javasrcipt is a program, that allows the user to program more easily, its a step up from another more basic program. then you have assembly which is really basic.

ideally one day, a programmer will make a language that the someone can program complex ideas, simply by talking to it in plain language. I mean someone who programs machine language, are they real, and the javascript guy is fake?

That said, i really dont think the nature of what is programming is really the main point of this exchange.

Fenrir.3609:

I swear these anti-TP arguments get progressively worse with each new thread (an impressive feat).

1. There is no evidence that the current mechanics need changing.

2. You can make more than enough to get luxury items without “playing” the markets.

3. If you want more ways of gaining rewards outside of gold (i’m all for that), then perhaps spend less time in threads like this crying about the TP and use that time creating threads in the general/dungeon/pvp forums outlining what sort of new content and rewards you would like to see.

4. No one gives a flying about what you consider to be “legitimate” or not. The market is part of the game, getting actively involved in said market is no less or no more legitimate than someone smacking mobs upside the head or having RP tea parties.

in an action adventure game smacking people upside the head is more legitimate. If i decide to start a 3 on 3 basketball tournament, i should really give the trophies/prizes to people who play the best, not the ones who are winning in the side fantasy football league.

As for feedback in other forums, this was in general first, it got moved here. Dungeon forums have not been commented on, or had any request for feedback, or had much actual changes in content, or reveal of any plans for a long long time. At this point im beginning to feel anet doesnt really believe in dungeons as a product any more. If there was an items and rewards subforum, i think it would get tons of feedback, but as of right now, this is the closest forum, and where most of these type of discussions get moved. Which makes sense, because economy is ultimately the balancing of needs, wants, supply, value of services, standard of living, etc.

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

If some one pays me for an art commision, and i say, i should have it by next week. It means i should have it by next week. Sometimes i dont have it by next week, i cop pleas, make excuses, appologize, and try to get it to them asap.

But see i recognize, the customer has a right to ask me when, and i should tell them, and should i go beyond the date, thats really my fault, my poor planning, or lack of being able to identify the issues. When you are late, and the customer hounds you every day, he isnt wrong, i am wrong, because i am already very late.

I’m not going to say that GW2 players don’t have the right to bring the issue up. They do. If they think they’re entitled to the fulfillment of a developer “promise,” that’s on them.

That said, however, your analogy is not a great fit. If a customer asks for an art commission, he has entered into a (presumably verbal) contract with the artist in which he offers to pay for the piece, which the artist then agrees to produce within time frame X. There is now an agreement between them, and the artist’s failure to live up to his end of it is a breach of contract. The customer, in that situation is entitled to demand explanation and expedited delivery of the promised artwork.

GW2 customers bought the game. The base game included neither precursor crafting nor a promise there would be precursor crafting. Nor does the customer pay directly for whatever ANet might promise to insert into the game — unless ANet structures it that way. Since they have not done so as yet, GW2 customers do not have the same contractual relationship with ANet over this issue as that of the artist and customer in your analogy.

I’ve done both art commissions and freebies. I feel a lot less urgency about keeping to a timetable for a freebie than I do for a paid commission. I’d tend to be more up front about that when I agreed to the freebie… “Sure, Joe, I’ll draw Dagnar the Dwarf for you, but I can’t commit to a deadline.” If Joe asked, I’d give him a ballpark if I felt I could. If he got strident about it, the relationship might get strained and he might never get his piece.

So, the issue is not that the customer is entitled to an answer the way an art commission customer would be . The issue is that ANet is squandering the good will of some of their customers by failing to come up with a new estimate.

squandering goodwill is actually a big problem in a business model like this. also, it really isnt a freebie, They are selling a service, i paid them for a service. A continuous service needs to have that goodwill, because a lot of it is trust that the service will be provided, and give people what they agreed to.

If i pay a plumbing company 100 bucks and they say they will come over for a year and snake the pipes if there is any issues, and they dont come thats a big problem. I understand its complex, troublesome, hard to pin down, but thats the product they sold. They knew this going in.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

phys.7689:

Relshdan.6854:

this is why they stopped previewing anything with us………..the “we’d like to have craftable precursors by end of 2013”, among other things, haunts them to this day.

its been 2 yrs…..their development cycle has now settled to “content” every 2-4 weeks…..“balance/bugfixing” (which laughably they seem to treat as the same thing) and “features” once or twice a year (awful in the case of balance/bugfixing).

so your best case scenario for craftable pre’s (or any of the other so-called promises) is around December.

it was not a, we d like to have this, it was, this is what you can expect and we have planned for 2nd half of 2013.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

“but what I can say is you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary. On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013.”

it wasnt an obscure maybe, it was a solid plan. It did not happen, it is 6 months after the latest possible day that could have still been within the schedule.

really guys, i know you love em, but come on, you cant really expect people to not ask you where is something you told them you would see 6 months ago. And once again, promising nothing is not a solution, the problem is, in about a year of planning/programing they have been unable to enact this feature. Thats kind of noticeable.
keep in mind guild wars 1 released a whole entire campaign in that time 3 times. FFXIV has added substantial content WHILE rebuilding the whole game in 2 years.

people arent talking crazy when they complain here, this has been an issue since like 3 months into the game, 2013 was just the point at which they said they would finally have a solution ready

When people quote things such as the above, I wonder why they always leave out this important statement:

‘As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.’

everything is subject to change in life, a disclaimer doesnt mean you shouldnt expect something, it means you cant sue em.

I mean if you are saying that you should always take everything people say at the minimum possible meaning, i have to disagree.

If i say. " i should be able to do that for you next week", there is a ton of wiggle room, but that doesnt mean i shouldnt actually do it within a week, it doesnt mean i dont expect to be hearing from a client in a week, doesnt mean im not expected to give them a new timeline.

Really guys, take this situation out of your favorite game/company, do you really expect so little from people? Is it really crazy to you that others expect something?

eh well every human is dif i suppose

shogei.8015:

phys.7689:

shogei.8015:

phys.7689:

And although flippers do keep inflation down somewhat, they also increase the wealth disparity, after all what a flipper essentially does, is either skim money off the item creator, or the item user, or both. they basically make everyone else poorer to make themselves richer.

This would only be true if flippers had some way of barring others from having the same access to the market that they do. Flippers don’t make anyone else poorer, as they don’t force anyone to sell to them or buy from them. If a flipper is able to buy at 10 silver then so can you. Just put in a buy order. You might have to wait a day or so, but that is your choice. A flipper can’t drive the buy price up too high or they won’t be able to find someone to sell it to at a profit. Flippers benefit from everyone having enough money to buy from them.

we arent talking about flippers holding guns to peoples heads we are talking about a flipper as an piece that will exhibit certain behavior.
This means overall, based on the definition of flipping, they will pay sellers less money or sell to buyers higher, or both. That is how they make money, it is their raison d’etre. They can only make money if they can do that. Therefor, the success of the flipper means some other users have gotten less than they could.
JS will say that in exchange for that money loss, they got time.

I think the TP overall is set up so that people will get pimped, tp players are competing with people who are not aware that they are competing. Some people may be willingly sacrificing time, but many people dont know any better and assume that the value people offer for an item represents its value.

See the whole thing is, a lot of players arent actually playing the market, but they are still in it, because they dont really have a choice. Dont believe me? why do you think anet had to add a minimum limits to npc price? Because people in this market are not rival businessmen, they are sheep to the slaughter. The only balance for them is other wolves, but all the wolves are competing to do is eat the sheep.

Do you understand that you don’t need to buy or sell at the posted prices? What makes you think that others aren’t that wise? A new player might be forgiven for not understanding how it works for the first few weeks in game, but it doesn’t take long to figure out as the TP has a pretty simple mechanic. Much simpler than, say, Liadri.

I do modest TP flipping, maybe 10-20 gold per week, mainly limited by my willingness to invest the time to do it intelligently. It never occurred to me to rely on people’s stupidity, only on their impatience. If someone wants money RIGHT NOW, they will sell at the “sell now” price. If they want the maximum value for their goods, they will put in a sell order. It’s not that hard to figure out, or to do. And it’s certainly not predatory. (There might be some predators out there, but it’s mostly just people trading time for money and vice versa)

people assume that it is going to be a long time, or a big wait, truth is, if you put at 1 copper lower you will usually sell in moments, people also have no idea how much prices fluctuate from hour to hour or day to day.

Its not some one saying, hmm, this at this price probably wont sell for 2 hours, or a day, they simply have no knowledge and assume an item would not be priced so low if it had other value.

In fact, many items you sell, it doesnt even show you the current selling prices you have to go out of your way to see what the item is selling for right now if it isnt the lowest item. Do most people know that if someone oversells to a buyer, it will list the item at that buying price? making it sometimes seem that the buy order and and sell order are extremely close, when they may be miles apart? the only way to see past lowest seller is to put in a search on the item.

And why do i assume they arent pros? because until they patched it, materials were consistently selling for under vendor value, sometimes substantially so. Enough people were consistently selling these items sub vendor, that for some items, even the sell orders were below npc price.
so yes, people are getting pimped.

people assume everyone playing this game is paying attention and making educated descisions, that is not really the case at all.

shogei.8015:

phys.7689:

And although flippers do keep inflation down somewhat, they also increase the wealth disparity, after all what a flipper essentially does, is either skim money off the item creator, or the item user, or both. they basically make everyone else poorer to make themselves richer.

This would only be true if flippers had some way of barring others from having the same access to the market that they do. Flippers don’t make anyone else poorer, as they don’t force anyone to sell to them or buy from them. If a flipper is able to buy at 10 silver then so can you. Just put in a buy order. You might have to wait a day or so, but that is your choice. A flipper can’t drive the buy price up too high or they won’t be able to find someone to sell it to at a profit. Flippers benefit from everyone having enough money to buy from them.

we arent talking about flippers holding guns to peoples heads we are talking about a flipper as an piece that will exhibit certain behavior.
This means overall, based on the definition of flipping, they will pay sellers less money or sell to buyers higher, or both. That is how they make money, it is their raison d’etre. They can only make money if they can do that. Therefor, the success of the flipper means some other users have gotten less than they could.
JS will say that in exchange for that money loss, they got time.

I think the TP overall is set up so that people will get pimped, tp players are competing with people who are not aware that they are competing. Some people may be willingly sacrificing time, but many people dont know any better and assume that the value people offer for an item represents its value.

See the whole thing is, a lot of players arent actually playing the market, but they are still in it, because they dont really have a choice. Dont believe me? why do you think anet had to add a minimum limits to npc price? Because people in this market are not rival businessmen, they are sheep to the slaughter. The only balance for them is other wolves, but all the wolves are competing to do is eat the sheep.

TooBz.3065:

I get that flipping can increase velocity and liquidity, but I wonder how flipping influences the consolidation of wealth and what impact that consolidation has on the game.

Of course, John is in a better position to know this that I am, but I whenever I get these explanations I always feel like there are some moving pieces missing.

John said that velocity and liquidity often lowers prices, in an economics 101 kind of way (thanks for that BTW), but he has also said that virtual economies behave differently than non-virtual ones, for example, increasing the precursor drop rate can, counter intuitively, cause an increase in the price. Are we confident that flippers actually lower prices in a virtual economy?

actually he explained how they increased liquidity, and velocity, didnt really explain how they lower prices.
I can see them smoothing out the price curve, with less everything getting cheap at once or getting expensive at once, but that isnt really lowering prices overall, thats just making a smoother curve.

Relshdan.6854:

this is why they stopped previewing anything with us………..the “we’d like to have craftable precursors by end of 2013”, among other things, haunts them to this day.

its been 2 yrs…..their development cycle has now settled to “content” every 2-4 weeks…..“balance/bugfixing” (which laughably they seem to treat as the same thing) and “features” once or twice a year (awful in the case of balance/bugfixing).

so your best case scenario for craftable pre’s (or any of the other so-called promises) is around December.

it was not a, we d like to have this, it was, this is what you can expect and we have planned for 2nd half of 2013.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

“but what I can say is you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary. On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013.”

it wasnt an obscure maybe, it was a solid plan. It did not happen, it is 6 months after the latest possible day that could have still been within the schedule.

really guys, i know you love em, but come on, you cant really expect people to not ask you where is something you told them you would see 6 months ago. And once again, promising nothing is not a solution, the problem is, in about a year of planning/programing they have been unable to enact this feature. Thats kind of noticeable.
keep in mind guild wars 1 released a whole entire campaign in that time 3 times. FFXIV has added substantial content WHILE rebuilding the whole game in 2 years.

people arent talking crazy when they complain here, this has been an issue since like 3 months into the game, 2013 was just the point at which they said they would finally have a solution ready

John Smith.4610:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Jansen.4753:

Flipping does not increase any price, in fact, without flippers sell orders could be higher, if you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand how it works, plus with the gold sink it creates its actually helping reduce inflation, which is good for everyone.

Sorry for my spelling

yeah… no. How, in gods name, should people who buying cheap and selling expensive help keeping the prices down? It makes no sense.

When a player adds velocity or liquidity to a market, the result is often lower prices and often prices closer to equilibrium.
Given recent feedback let me try also this in other terms (I’ve tried this before and failed so bare with me).

Supply and Demand curves can also be called Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Sell curves. Essentially they are the shape of what people are willing to pay or how much people are willing to sell for. If everyone is will to pay $5 then the “demand” curve would be a flat horizontal line at $5.
In real markets the curves end up being curves because people have different preferences or costs. I might be willing to pay $100 for a new video game and you may be willing to pay $50 and yet another person $30. When you extrapolate this out you get a smooth curve of what people are willing to pay (it works the same way for the willingness to sell).

Balance (or equilibrium) occurs when those two lines meet, and people are willing to pay the same amount people are willing to sell. This price is decided by the market as a whole. Given the “freeness” of our market in GW2 people can sell for more or less than this price. In a textbook this would never happen because people always want to be in that balanced state. In real life though, especially in video games, people have different preferences outside of that market equation. Time is a major factor of this equation in real life. Imagine you could instantly sell items to a vendor for 1 gold or you could place them on the TP for 1gold 5 silver; some amount of player would be willing to sell straight the the vendor and save the time because their preference for time or convenience makes that a good trade off for them and that’s awesome, people should be allowed to make that trade off if they want. Now let’s say people instead just place everything on the TP for super cheap instead of vendoring because it’s easier. The prices these items are placed at are often placed below that equilibrium price which leaves room for someone to purchase those items and sell them at equilibrium price earning some profit per item. The person who purchases and resells values that trades and so does the individual selling easily, in this case both parties match what they want. Now the market has items placed at the equilibrium price for the standard buyers/sellers that sell at that equilibrium. Those sellers cannot change that equilibrium price and placing items above that price will result in the items not selling. They cannot raise the price, the market has decided the price and other people have decided their willingness to sell.

The first question to ask here is, “Isn’t the profit of the reseller directly equivalent to how much people are willing to trade off money for time or other preferences?”
The answer is yes, and more than that, the potential profit is split between all the different individuals attempting to buy and resell. Since the profit is finite and will become distributed between players, why wouldn’t people begin doing that until everyone only made little to no money? If everyone was the same person they would, but there must be some barrier to entry to that activity, there must be something that stops people from jumping in and distributing some of that profit to themselves. The most common and the most correct (but not complete) is that it takes time and skill, if it did not there would be almost no profit in the activity because the potential would be split between too many different individuals.

(Hello again econ and business people, I’m aware that this is very simple, but I’m attempting to introduce people to the ideas and attempting to explain complex concepts right away turns out poorly)

its not something that people want to do. I do a lot of random works, because i got problems, anyhow, someone wanted to pay me and a contractor buddy to clean out some sewage that overflowed due to blockage. my friend took the job, we ended up paying a sizable sum to a random worker, because essentially, a lot of people dont actually like cleaning up human feces, us included.

Its not that flipping is so hard, its just not something a lot of people want to do. Now normally this makes sense people get paid more for the jobs no one wants to do, buuuut its an action adventure game though…

a lot of people want to get cool stuff through adventure, not accounting/brokering/etc.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

From the perspective of the balance team, it’s really not.

It’s like saying you’re scripting JavaScript and HTML because you’re using formatting tags and clicking the quote button – tools created by the web developer to make certain tasks easier for us by automating it.

It’s entering information into a program to adjust the properties of the skill. The balance team themselves don’t interact with the actual code of the tool. They put information into the program, and the program adjusts the code for the user.

In no way is entering information into a program and having the program do the rest of the task programming.

well, it kind of is, every programming language we use is a tool created by a programmer to automate or make it easier for a user to create outputs. But the question really is, does it matter?