Guild Wars 2

Balgus.3468:

I gave up after I heard how much of everything I needed to make it lol I’m just gonna farm up the gold instead lol

Not to worry, they’ve made it more worth while by helpfully nerfing dungeon run gold farms… now you can happily go back to collecting for the next 2 years

Dahkeus.8243:

What are you doing wrong? I can’t say, but if you want to see how strong Scrapper can be, run a build like the one below (shamelessly stole that one from Chaithh’s Twitch). Builds like these allow for really high sustain with substantial damage.

This is, of course, assuming that you’re talking from a PvP perspective.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhqrYnXwdLQ7FLsFFdwP8JPYIeiBgYHNFPBA-TJhHwAEeAAAuAAj2fwYZAA

Cool build but maybe switch out slick shoes for bomb kit to get access to fire field? Could maybe then do away with the sigil of battle for something else?

To be fair… making it less visual has PvP benefits I’m catching more folks with it now.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

…..

Your theory has several flaws. First of all, the supply of precursors, while its definately a rare and demanded item, isnt as unelastic as you think.

I disagree and would say that precursors are relatively inelastic… but it was just part of the example… if it would make you feel better then substitute chain swords from the first Halloween event. My point remains the same. I think you are missing the general concept I was going for.

I could point you to some old threads where those issues were discussed and JS also chipped in about rich players not really having an impact on prices of luxury items and daily sales of precursors, if youre interested.

The 2012 Halloween items are expensive not because there are rich players in the game, they are expensive because their supply is limited.

Of course its driven higher because it’s limited. I specifically chose it because it represents a better example of an inelastic item to which I was referring since you decided to object to the precursor example.

The item itself is not significant, its the class of items which are rare and inelastic (or relatively so) in supply, yet desired, that I am using in my example. The specific item is irrelevant to my argument.

Now that we have agreed with one of the premisses of my argument (that there exist desired, inelastic items), you can re-read the two cases I provided.

The two cases demonstrate how the price of inelastic in demand goods can be affected by wealth distribution. So it is not MERELY the scarcity of an item that determines the end price, but how wealth is distributed among potential purchasers can impact the end price as well.

Q.E.D.?

OK, lets get back to your example.

Those 5 flippers with 1800g must first have a personal demand for that item and then they have to be willing to spend more than 10g on that item, which isnt neccessarily true. And once those flippers got theirs, the price will go down to 10g anyways.

Another think to point out is that whoever found that item and only has 10g, can only list it for a max of 200g.

Right… and as there are in reality many more rich people than 5 folks I’d say this becomes a lot more probable.

(Of course there’s also likely more than 1 or 2 some elastic item left, but I think the rich demand will be relatively high based on volume of rich people. This demand will tend to greatly greatly “outweigh” the inelastic supply given you can choose to flip these and play the market with them meaning that each rich person represents potential demand for several (or all in some cases) of these).

To use a re-world analogy, if the current sum of money were evenly distributed amongst all the current players… there is no way a chain sword could list for what it does.

Allowing methods of play which greatly exacerbate in-equal wealth distributions will contribute to make certain goods unavailable to those whom don’t play in that manner. This means that because some people play this way, others will be forced to modify their preferred play style to these same methods if they wish to purchase those goods.

From this one might argue that a more reasonably equitable potential level of profit regardless of play style chosen (skill in said play style of course factoring in) might be preferable for the majority of players.

Well, i think Anet addressed unelastic items and didnt really introduce any new ones in a very lng time and keeps reintroducing limited ones on a regular basis.

Even if there were no rich players in game, items with limited or short supply wont be available to everybody. If all players would get an equal amount of gold per hour, people who play more will be able to pay higher prices than other players.

So it doesnt make a difference if there are some filthy rich players.

That’s a bit black and white thinking of you, you should think more in terms of degrees. There are items which are relatively in-elastic for instance. And there are degrees of disparity which matter, not just simply whether disparity exists or not.

However I sense that it would not be convenient for you to concede to what I am trying to explain to you, and people will tend to believe what they wish to be true. So I will leave it for others reading to judge for themselves and refrain from trying to lead you to water any further.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

…..

Your theory has several flaws. First of all, the supply of precursors, while its definately a rare and demanded item, isnt as unelastic as you think.

I disagree and would say that precursors are relatively inelastic… but it was just part of the example… if it would make you feel better then substitute chain swords from the first Halloween event. My point remains the same. I think you are missing the general concept I was going for.

I could point you to some old threads where those issues were discussed and JS also chipped in about rich players not really having an impact on prices of luxury items and daily sales of precursors, if youre interested.

The 2012 Halloween items are expensive not because there are rich players in the game, they are expensive because their supply is limited.

Of course its driven higher because it’s limited. I specifically chose it because it represents a better example of an inelastic item to which I was referring since you decided to object to the precursor example.

The item itself is not significant, its the class of items which are rare and inelastic (or relatively so) in supply, yet desired, that I am using in my example. The specific item is irrelevant to my argument.

Now that we have agreed with one of the premisses of my argument (that there exist desired, inelastic items), you can re-read the two cases I provided.

The two cases demonstrate how the price of inelastic in demand goods can be affected by wealth distribution. So it is not MERELY the scarcity of an item that determines the end price, but how wealth is distributed among potential purchasers can impact the end price as well.

Q.E.D.?

OK, lets get back to your example.

Those 5 flippers with 1800g must first have a personal demand for that item and then they have to be willing to spend more than 10g on that item, which isnt neccessarily true. And once those flippers got theirs, the price will go down to 10g anyways.

Another think to point out is that whoever found that item and only has 10g, can only list it for a max of 200g.

Right… and as there are in reality many more rich people than 5 folks I’d say this becomes a lot more probable.

(Of course there’s also likely more than 1 or 2 some elastic item left, but I think the rich demand will be relatively high based on volume of rich people. This demand will tend to greatly greatly “outweigh” the inelastic supply given you can choose to flip these and play the market with them meaning that each rich person represents potential demand for several (or all in some cases) of these).

To use a re-world analogy, if the current sum of money were evenly distributed amongst all the current players… there is no way a chain sword could list for what it does.

Allowing methods of play which greatly exacerbate in-equal wealth distributions will contribute to make certain goods unavailable to those whom don’t play in that manner. This means that because some people play this way, others will be forced to modify their preferred play style to these same methods if they wish to purchase those goods.

From this one might argue that a more reasonably equitable potential level of profit regardless of play style chosen (skill in said play style of course factoring in) might be preferable for the majority of players.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

…..

Your theory has several flaws. First of all, the supply of precursors, while its definately a rare and demanded item, isnt as unelastic as you think.

I disagree and would say that precursors are relatively inelastic… but it was just part of the example… if it would make you feel better then substitute chain swords from the first Halloween event. My point remains the same. I think you are missing the general concept I was going for.

I could point you to some old threads where those issues were discussed and JS also chipped in about rich players not really having an impact on prices of luxury items and daily sales of precursors, if youre interested.

The 2012 Halloween items are expensive not because there are rich players in the game, they are expensive because their supply is limited.

Of course its driven higher because it’s limited. I specifically chose it because it represents a better example of an inelastic item to which I was referring since you decided to object to the precursor example.

The item itself is not significant, its the class of items which are rare and inelastic (or relatively so) in supply, yet desired, that I am using in my example. The specific item is irrelevant to my argument.

Now that we have agreed with one of the premisses of my argument (that there exist desired, inelastic items), you can re-read the two cases I provided.

The two cases demonstrate how the price of inelastic in demand goods can be affected by wealth distribution. So it is not MERELY the scarcity of an item that determines the end price, but how wealth is distributed among potential purchasers can impact the end price as well.

Q.E.D.?

They did have Mawdrey require some 1000 Luck’s to be made I believe… maybe they’ll make it a general requirement for some sort of advanced crafting.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

…..

Your theory has several flaws. First of all, the supply of precursors, while its definately a rare and demanded item, isnt as unelastic as you think.

I disagree and would say that precursors are relatively inelastic… but it was just part of the example… if it would make you feel better then substitute chain swords from the first Halloween event. My point remains the same. I think you are missing the general concept I was going for.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

shion.2084:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

shion.2084:

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

Have you ever done the math on how much that bow cost the original seller to get?

Assume he used 30 keys to get it. (Current average to get scraps. Past average was 50 keys but we’ll say he was lucky and only used 30).
If he bought keys then 30 keys is 2520 gems. (At 25 keys = 2100 gems = $26.25€)
Assume he bought it when it came out on Aug 13, 2014. At that time 100 gems was ~15 gold 50 silver.

That means 2520 gems was worth ~390 gold.

You got a steal at 100 gold because people don’t sit down and figure out how much the weapons are actually worth, plus they undercut each other.

Well that’s kind of an unfair comparison. How many of the weapons on the TP are actually from players who have brought gems and used thoes to buy keys?

I would guess that most are from players keyfarming (though it has been nerfed). So the average price would be way lower.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

So to further your example about whether 12.5 hours makes 100 gold reasonable, you’d look at how much you could reasonably expect to make from 12.5 Gold over what you were earning during the 12.5 hours you spent key running. And I guess that subtraction factor is what Wanze is commenting on?

So if I spent my 12.5 hours running dungeons and all time spent was equal to me… then what would I have earned and that – The 140 chest stuffs found while key running is the opportunity cost to have invested in getting those keys.

Which means this result is what those keys cost you.

EDIT: My bad, Wanze was talking about the chests opened with the keys… not the map completion rewards or rewards gotten while running for the keys….
So I guess I’m making a new point then… that you have to subtract the incideental value you are likely to earn from your key running for 12.5 hours.

True. But at whose value? ANet prices (values) the majority of the items I get at far higher prices than I am willing to pay. If they price something at 30 gems but I would not pay more than one gem, then just because I get ten 30 gem items, doesn’t mean that I got 300 gems value for my efforts. If I only value those items at 1 gem then I only got 10 gems value.

Since I (and from the majority of people’s comments on the forums who call the contents junk) don’t value the items highly, then counting items as income that I would not buy and can not sell leads to a false value for a key run.

For example, they could put a doodad in the chest that does absolutely nothing at all or very little, 2 seconds of swiftness perhaps, is account bound and they price it at 1000 gems. If I get one, that does not mean my key run was worth 1000 gems to me. What they price account bound items as is somewhat irrelevant, if it’s something I would not buy.

Yup yup, I was actually not just talking about stuffs in the BL chest (which you can consider equal to what you’d get if you opened by paying for the keys so even as you stated…) but actually the extra stuff gained worth gold while doing your key farming runs.

That’s extra proffit in gold on the running side which reduces the cost of those keys effectively.

Labjax.2465:

I don’t know what the deal is with titles. They seem really tight-lipped about them for some reason and there are so many places where they could add more, but they don’t.

Then they go and give out really cool sounding ones for basically nothing… like the Silver Waste Champ ones. You just have to tag the darn thing. Demolisher my butt.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

shion.2084:

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

Have you ever done the math on how much that bow cost the original seller to get?

Assume he used 30 keys to get it. (Current average to get scraps. Past average was 50 keys but we’ll say he was lucky and only used 30).
If he bought keys then 30 keys is 2520 gems. (At 25 keys = 2100 gems = $26.25€)
Assume he bought it when it came out on Aug 13, 2014. At that time 100 gems was ~15 gold 50 silver.

That means 2520 gems was worth ~390 gold.

You got a steal at 100 gold because people don’t sit down and figure out how much the weapons are actually worth, plus they undercut each other.

Well that’s kind of an unfair comparison. How many of the weapons on the TP are actually from players who have brought gems and used thoes to buy keys?

I would guess that most are from players keyfarming (though it has been nerfed). So the average price would be way lower.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

So to further your example about whether 12.5 hours makes 100 gold reasonable, you’d look at how much you could reasonably expect to make from 12.5 Gold over what you were earning during the 12.5 hours you spent key running. And I guess that subtraction factor is what Wanze is commenting on?

So if I spent my 12.5 hours running dungeons and all time spent was equal to me… then what would I have earned and that – The 140 chest stuffs found while key running is the opportunity cost to have invested in getting those keys.

Which means this result is what those keys cost you.

EDIT: My bad, Wanze was talking about the chests opened with the keys… not the map completion rewards or rewards gotten while running for the keys….
So I guess I’m making a new point then… that you have to subtract the incideental value you are likely to earn from your key running for 12.5 hours.

Even in fast connection play, if your doing like a 3V3 and the area your trying to heal on is saturated with AOE and conditions this can happen. Basically it can happen to you on any ?V3 or more, and in limited cirucmstances less than that.

You see I don’t think condi cleanse of your fellows, even on point, would save your turret. So you basically have to run out of the thick of things in order to go heal… quite a disadvantage over how it use to be… and of course your healing blasts won’t help your teammates anymore….

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

I think its rediculous, if someone complains that he doesnt make as much gold from his loot as i do as a trader because you have the choice to offer your loot for basically any price you want.

Just list it at double or triple the current lowest listing and wait until it sells.

I do the same.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

My appologies then.

You are correct… if they were to make a complaint along those lines it should be that the method you are currently able to use in order to generate wealth disparity is overly effective and unbalancing to the game and thus negatively impacting their game play experience in some of the “end” aspects of the game perhaps?

They might legitimately wish for a combative skill equivalent that could generate these kinds of returns for roughly the same effort invested. (of course then they’d have to be willing to accept riks, such as the old armour repair charges).

How does my wealth unbalance the game and negatively impact their gameplay?

Just because i might have 100 times more gold than other players doesnt mean i consume 100 times more items than the reguar player.

Once I unlocked a skin, i have little need to buy another one, for example, so I am not competing for that skin anymore, even though i could afford to buy 100 of them.

Anything i do or have achieved until now can be done by anybody, who invests as much time as me into it.

If people want to earn lots of dosh with their skills, they can set up competitions for dungeon speed runs, jumping puzzles or pvp tournaments, where everybody chips in with some gold for the winners cash purse.

Most people just have a problem with the fact that they have to invest in order to be able to to earn mad cash and there is a risk of losing it involved.

The issue becomes apparent with items of higher rarity and inelastic supply. Even though you being rich only want 1 precursor, and there are 10 others like you who are wealthy… and there are 2 precursors total…. you get the following situation I’d previously made an example of….

“Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

…. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

(edited 2 days ago by shion.2084)

2 days ago

"

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

I think its rediculous, if someone complains that he doesnt make as much gold from his loot as i do as a trader because you have the choice to offer your loot for basically any price you want.

Just list it at double or triple the current lowest listing and wait until it sells.

I do the same.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

My appologies then.

You are correct… if they were to make a complaint along those lines it should be that the method you are currently able to use in order to generate wealth disparity is overly effective and unbalancing to the game and thus negatively impacting their game play experience in some of the “end” aspects of the game perhaps?

They might legitimately wish for a combative skill equivalent that could generate these kinds of returns for roughly the same effort invested. (of course then they’d have to be willing to accept riks, such as the old armour repair charges).

Cyninja.2954:

shion.2084:

The point I was trying to make for 3 is that folks who play the non farm / TP way are likely counting on being able to sell the items they do come across in bulk to be able to afford a luxury item. This is made harder when the items they are likely go come across have been devalued by farmers.

There is a second whammy in that by making disproportionate amounts of money by farming, a farmer also raises the price of the desired good itself. (so the average guy sells for less and has to pay far more than if money was more evenly distributed).

I’m not sure where you are going with this.

Ah Well I was explaining the ramifications of allowing both farming and TPing behaviors with respect to said activities’ impact inflation of certain items. Specifically when you asked me about my third point (which was to do with farming). I highlighted two negative impacts of farming on those who don’t. Once is direct in lowering value of goods, the other is more indirect and a consequence of unequal distribution of wealth.

“There will NEVER be a situation where any item that drops “in bulk” or that many people come buy often will gain significant value unless specifically designed for (see silk shortage). The very nature of farming is to look for items that can get farmed easily and fast and converted to gold on the trading post. "

Vastly more bulk of these materials is generated by farmers whom do not represent a sink for the materials produced. One might say that perhaps if it wasn’t a hugely frequent by-product of farming that there would in fact be some value to it. The bulk that farmers generate of it contributes to its devaluation. More supply means lower prices if demand is the same. They increase supply but not demand.

Also there is some value to Mithril it is produced in the majority of my salvagings. But that’s just to point out a counter example to your general theory about bulk… unless you consider it to be a special case as well… in which case there are many so as to make the special cases not very special.

“Have enough farmers and price will drop since they all sell their loot on the trading post.”
Yup and thus farmers reduce the price of goods that non farming folks will count on selling to be able to afford the finer things in life. Ok now I think we’re not disagreeing.

“If you have enough gold influx into the economy without going through the trading post prices will definately rise.”

Sorry is there an example of how gold influx"es" into the economy by going through the trading post? This sounds sort of reduncant. Even if gold does go through the trading post, you only loose a sink of 15% so prices would still rise.

" What you seem to missunderstand is, no matter if farmed or not, MMOs generate a constant influx of goods and value (somewhere along the line of billions $$$ per day of virtual goods accross the entire industry). The only thing keeping this in check are goldsinks in games. "

I don’t disagree… what I’m saying is that farming and TPing exacerbates the problems I mentioned.

“What you are asking for is for items that are in ambudant supply to have a high value. The mere fact that they have value means there is a scarcity and not oversupply. It just makes no sense.”

I’m actually not asking for that… I’m pointing out what farming does to devalue goods that those not farming have a larger reliance on selling in order to obtain scarce things.

“[b]Could arenanet try to keep farming and regular play close together? [/b]

-> Sure, they keep nerfing the most lucrative farming methods. "

Well there are other options as well… they can produce less unintentional by-product, as opposed to just nerfing. So that someone farming on the latest hot spot doesn’t have as great a chance of dropping the value of some material relatively unrelated to the sorts of things their killing and their geographic location.

“[b]Will they achieve absolute equality between every game mode and every farm?[/b]

- That is literally near impossible unless we abolish items and loot altogether. Just ask WvW and PvP players how much they make per hour compared to any PvE. Even here arenanet are trying to imporve the loot/gold gained."

Agreed you’d never want enforced absolute equality. Perhaps you should enforce more severe and effective means of diminishing returns in order to dissuade farmers. Thus they won’t get too far ahead on any given day. Another thing that should probably be looked at.

“tl;dr: You can’t go against supply and demand. If something is scarce, it will be more expensive. Farmers will reduce prices on items farmed, and increase prices on items desired (which in turn will start getting farmed once they gain enough value).”

Right so we should find ways to fix the convenience of farming perhaps… I think we’re in agreement.

Wanze.8410:

I think its rediculous, if someone complains that he doesnt make as much gold from his loot as i do as a trader because you have the choice to offer your loot for basically any price you want.

Just list it at double or triple the current lowest listing and wait until it sells.

I do the same.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

Phineas Poe.3018:

For raids I’m planning on tanking with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhSsYtWwPLQ7FLsFFdwP8JPYIWiBg4GVF3IA-TxRBABSr+DS7PQtyvmfAAAcBAcWHQaKBJFAM7qA-e

If I’m not tanking, I’ll probably not run Scrapper.

How are you getting the speed in this that triggers both your vigor boost and your sustain trait in scrapper??

yes and thought myself a merchant and not a hero.

Cyninja.2954:

shion.2084:

3) Farming / Tping can affect people who don’t do so by devaluing the things they are likely to come by and sell.

3.) Yes, farming can devalue certain items by increasing the supply of those items into the economy. TPing will result in rebalancing near to where supply and demand push a good. I don’t understand the point you are trying to make.
.

The point I was trying to make for 3 is that folks who play the non farm / TP way are likely counting on being able to sell the items they do come across in bulk to be able to afford a luxury item. This is made harder when the items they are likely go come across have been devalued by farmers.

There is a second whammy in that by making disproportionate amounts of money by farming, a farmer also raises the price of the desired good itself. (so the average guy sells for less and has to pay far more than if money was more evenly distributed).

Then these farmers will tell you what favours they do for you, and how what they do is only good for the economy.

While I absolutely hate it they only recourse I could come up with to counter this was to start running money making farming activities myself… Or buying stupid things I didn’t care about to make money. I want to be a hero not be forced into being a merchant to get some precursor locked behind an RNG.

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

NOTE that precurosr was my particular case so I get that as of very recently they’ve now given you a non- RNG option, but substitute in whatever RNG item you want that is rare. Also note that the cost they’ve built in to make the precur item is based on of course what the TPers and wealth players have driven it up to… so there is still impact there.

So in the end I am in the sad state of running for the world boss, and who cares if some village gets taken over by grawl if those villagers weren’t going to reward me enough. Yup be a hero, play in tyria. Its gotten to a point where I actually feel bad for the world bosses these days… or corrupted temples in cursed shores…. poor kittens don’t even have a chance.

I basically have to engage in these activities to have a competitive chance of being able to keep up with TPers and Farmers, and in doing so I am contributing to the problem. And so this is the dirty part o fthe true impact of Farmers an TPers on the average player, for the next time the wide eye’d innocent claim of … but we don’t impact you and only make things better if we do, comes up.

Behellagh.1468:

shion.2084:

“The only thing we can be sure of is inflation du to more gold entering the economy, everything after that is a wild guess.”

ENOUGH!!!

This is untrue if the general items you are looking at are rare ones…. The DISTRIBUTION of wealth can cause inflation on rare items of limited supply.

(As an aside:
Increase in gold also won’t cause inflation on objects which are so trivially to get you end up with far more than you need whatever you do.)

Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

So when farmers tell you that they are keeping prices lower…. OR a TPer tells you that it shouldn’t bother you that they are making money by manipulating the market to make wealth.. because how could that possibly affect you?….

they may mean in general on objects that you don’t care about as much because you can get fairly trivially. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

Gee, only the wealthy can get high demand/limited supply items. I’ll call the media.

Of course they are expensive, of course their price increases as the top tier increase their worth because the law of supply and demand is about maximizing the value of the supply. Since in this case supply is not in control of the players, supply is fairly inelastic, the price rises to only deal the few who can get into a bidding war for it.

Yes, this means that wealth disparity sets the cost of these low supply, high demand items at a point well beyond most players. But if it’s your assertion that it’s from trading it came from players who were indifferent in keeping their many. Plus you can’t bootstrap yourself from zero. They had to first earn their gold in game (or buy gold earned by others and willingly sold for gems).

How many players sell immediately rather than place a sell order? How many buy immediately rather than place a buy order? I don’t flip per se, I buy in bulk to promote, open, salvage and even craft for reasons not related to crafting to 500. I see how items come into the market, it’s not continuously, they come in fits and starts, different times of day, etc. My orders, both for buying and selling, are providing a higher buy price and lower sell price than what was already there. The individual selling and buying could to the same but they want their coin or item immediately so with out me, someone not buying items for my own use or selling what was dropped just on me, are providing a service.

As Wanze asked before, what’s the difference between someone like me who manipulates an item he buys (as in crafting, promoting, savaging) and someone who simply turns around and sells it at the going rate which would still provide them with some profit?

I don’t think we’re disagreeing. I’m pointing out that when their are vague accusations made against farmers and TPers whom are wealthy, and the response is that the wealthy are in fact doing the poor a favour, that this is a hasty generalization. It is in fact disingenuous.

I find that the games condoning these styles of play does have a negative impact on the player who does things like explore the map, or do events they happen to come by, etc. This occurs when that player wishes to interact with the economy to purchase the more desired items.

The price of these items is dramatically higher than if people were not allowed to engage in the convenient methods of mass wealth accrual that exist. It goes beyond their being more money in the game but a matter of distribution of wealth that specifically makes this situation worse.

We perhaps should look at ways to reduce the disparity so that desired goods are more reasonably available to those whom choose less monetarily focused methods of play… like you know, helping a passing caravan out or saving a small village by building snow men… exploring a previously overlooked cave… or… being a hero…. rather than a mob of 5000 folks hitting their AOE to tag as many enemies as possible with no chance of dying..

pdavis.8031:

shion.2084:

There is another aspect to farmers that proponens seldom remember to mention and it will get potentially worse if there isn’t as much of a golden “faucet” say from dungeons.

While a farmer being wealthy will cause a rise in the rarer goods (as per the previous posting), they also do exactly what they tell you they are doing and lower the value of common goods. So for instance that minor sigil of bleeding…. there’s gonna be tons of them listed at the lowest price possible on the TP.

So what does this mean to someone who doesn’t farm? Well the goods they are likely to come across won’t sell for as much because farmers have glutted the market with them. And since you can’t get gold without trading too someone as readily anymore, this means your in a potentially worse position, beause not much your likely to come across through normal non-farming play is going to sell for anything.

Finally when a farmer bottoms out the market and people realize they might as well just go sell it to an NPC merchant…. that actually is the opposite of a gold sink, but rather generates exactly the kind of wealth that they argued they were combating.

Things never really mentioned….

This is true to an extent. But you also have to figure that the items that they sell that bottom out, like the minor sigils, is not just due to farmers glutting the market, but that no one wants them.

I perhaps shouldn’t have mentioned minor sigils as an example… so consider then something that you’d argue people do have more use for like leather (the level 80 type). Until the recent speculation that they’d be decreasing the drop rate, it was pretty much at the lowest possible selling value. I was selling directly to the vendors in stacks of 250 and making maybe 80 silver or something off of it? not even sure as I just needed it out of my bank.

So I would conjecture that because it had such a wide variety of sources and was an incidental by-product of farming, farming directly and seriously contributed to its lowering in value. And those whom played the game more casually and produced more reasonable amounts of it, found that when they went to sell it it wasn’t worth anything.

But in any case specific examples are less interesting to me then explaining to those whom parrot the one sided advantages of TP flipping and farming while claiming there are no downsides. I find the bias and the general air of mockery off putting and so once in a while I feel compelled to point out exactly why what they do impacts my play experience.

The facts are,

1) farming can contribute to “new money” being brought into the economy if they bottom prices. and people sell to vendors

2) Playing for wealth maximization via TPing or Farming does affect people who don’t and want to purchase more rare items. (see long first post)

3) Farming / Tping can affect people who don’t do so by devaluing the things they are likely to come by and sell.

Interesting Question:
What are the real effects of removing liquid rewards on the typical player being able to purchase the desired items in the game? Will reducing dungeons and generally making other “liquid rewards” harder to get be advantageous for the general player in terms of being able to acquire the things people “really want” in the game? will it make those whom already have large amounts of wealth even more rich by deflating?

There is another aspect to farmers that proponens seldom remember to mention and it will get potentially worse if there isn’t as much of a golden “faucet” say from dungeons.

While a farmer being wealthy will cause a rise in the rarer goods (as per the previous posting), they also do exactly what they tell you they are doing and lower the value of common goods. So for instance that minor sigil of bleeding…. there’s gonna be tons of them listed at the lowest price possible on the TP.

So what does this mean to someone who doesn’t farm? Well the goods they are likely to come across won’t sell for as much because farmers have glutted the market with them. And since you can’t get gold without trading too someone as readily anymore, this means your in a potentially worse position, beause not much your likely to come across through normal non-farming play is going to sell for anything.

Finally when a farmer bottoms out the market and people realize they might as well just go sell it to an NPC merchant…. that actually is the opposite of a gold sink, but rather generates exactly the kind of wealth that they argued they were combating.

Things never really mentioned….

I would be interested in seeing how inflation has occurred on the items everyone really wants that are limited by not being available anymore, or have exceedingly rare drop rates and superior functionality.

Take things like pre-cursors used in classes metas in a number of classes.(terrestrial).

“The only thing we can be sure of is inflation du to more gold entering the economy, everything after that is a wild guess.”

ENOUGH!!!

This is untrue if the general items you are looking at are rare ones…. The DISTRIBUTION of wealth can cause inflation on rare items of limited supply.

(As an aside:
Increase in gold also won’t cause inflation on objects which are so trivially to get you end up with far more than you need whatever you do.)

Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

So when farmers tell you that they are keeping prices lower…. OR a TPer tells you that it shouldn’t bother you that they are making money by manipulating the market to make wealth.. because how could that possibly affect you?….

they may mean in general on objects that you don’t care about as much because you can get fairly trivially. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

PlatinumMember.5274:

shion.2084:

Swagger.1459:

thrag.9740:

Swagger.1459:

Skip to boss then kill and collect over and over is not healthy for the game.

Good to know that map switching in silver wastes (looking for vine wraith) will be removed…. or LFG for killing in Orr Boss events will be removed as well… Since that’s what Arena Net doesn’t want.

Except that SW only transfer wealth and acts as a supply for the overall market. SW is getting nerfed as a result of the reduction in salvaging output. SW makes money from selling items on the TP and it gets taxed.

Dungeon creates wealth and it doesn’t get taxed.

Except everyone who says this is missing cases.

What do you think happens when I acrue 250 Leather (well as of a month ago, prices changed currently), or minor sigils, and sell them to a vendor because the TP is at its lowest value? I actually am creating money out of nothing on any interaction where I sell to a vendor and got goods directly from drops.

log in … get Laurels… have trinkets.

Swagger.1459:

thrag.9740:

Swagger.1459:

Skip to boss then kill and collect over and over is not healthy for the game.

Good to know that map switching in silver wastes (looking for vine wraith) will be removed…. or LFG for killing in Orr Boss events will be removed as well… Since that’s what Arena Net doesn’t want.

I thought standing around and hitting 1 on a world boss was …..

skill queueing still when involving toolbelt skills. Not sure exactly how but keep seeing them canceled when I try to do a couple f things without waiting seconds for things like BOB to drop.

Frightlight.3796:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Your constructive feedback has been really awesome so far and I trust will continue to be. I understand your concerns with not enough being communicated and I’m looking into getting more information out on some of the more solid changes we have.

Thank you for the update. Is there by chance any info you can give us on traits being changed up or reworked in anyway? Also has any thought been given too the minors too make them more useful in pve content as well as benefiting pvp/wvw?

oh, oh, better synergy with close range kits like bombs please! and the ability to actually stick around a bit in combat with all those overlapping condi fields on the ground.

You’d think those perma-stealthing, clone making mesmers would get the worst of it. Man are those annoying… who loves playing the “which one am I game” with the answer “none of the above”

As someone said, people in full ascended without food buffs will be less effective than those in exotics with… therefore if food is not required for those in ascended, then people in exotics (with appropriate food) will do just fine (as agony won’t exist in raids)..

I’m not sure how there can really be much discussion about this.

I’m not saying this is the case… it just could turn out to be an “entirely unintentional side-effect”. To early to start conspiracy theories yet.

Now you could probably argue that existing content folks will still have access to fractals (will they get the level 51+ stuff?) So if they do and this is where the balances for the nerf are applied then it would be more fair. If the real monentary balancing is in raids then that would be pretty crap of them.

If you’re refering to me…. PvP is an example of an activity that people choose to do, despite making less profit, because they actually find it more entertaining. There already exists activities with the qualities I describe.

Try making a better game and lure people to places you want rather than prodding them with a stick. You’ll have happier customers.

Yeah I sort of thought that charging elite equipment weilders repair costs would be a good way to have those whom were just starting catch up in money (since rare and below wouldn’t require equipment repair costs) and those with the luxury goods would get taxed if they were damaged.

I feel sorta bad for those whom did not buy the expansion… they used to have dungeons to make money… if those rewards are now to be redistributed to raids, and they can’t do them… well that’s a bit nasty. We’ll have to see how it turns out, but I could see folks who’d paid for the original game and chosen not to update being even more sour.

I would rather see them make new activities more interesting and enjoyable as a way of getting people to perform them over running dungeons. I think the nerfing strikes me as an inability to generate more enjoyable content that people will voluntarily want to do even if at a slightly lesser reward. They should aim to make new offerings even more enjoyable from an experience perspective so as to lure people away.

It is salty to go and nerf dugneons because you want people to play the same boring fractal levels we’ve had for years. There are far more dungeons than fractals, so even at equal reward I’d probably spend more of my time in dungeons as it offers more variety.

The are basically compensating for their inability to come up with more accessible and entertaining content.

Can’t you trade laurels for them?

[quote=5602939;John Smith.4610:

Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
Yes
[/quote]

Why? Why do you want people whom enjoy running dungeons, part of the enjoyment being derived from the current incentive for completion, to be dis-incentivized?

I assume that the issue isn’t solely that it represents an effective way for players to make money, as it is not the most profitable endeavor, correct?

Is part of the reason because it is a profitable endeavor that you cannot control because it generates a fixed reward? (though you have already restricted that reward to once a day)

Whereas I suppose if you wanted to make silverwastes or other drop based farming less profitable you could always just stealth nerf the drops, is that part of the reason why those methods of the wealth generation are more appealing to you?

Is it because this generates significant actual gold currency as opposed to items which can be sold for gold?

Is it because the gold generated by this is added to the economy, whereas drop based wealth is shifting of gold that exists in the economy already and is “taxed” when exchanged?

Have you considered that simply making your other content far more enjoyable would be a way to get players to shift activities? If so, were they not as enjoyable as you’d hoped to dis-incentivize folks from dungeon runs?

Perhaps your efforts would be better spent making more enjoyable game offerings that offer less reward? Essentially PvP can be seen as a model of this… it is far less profitable than running dungeons but people choose to do it instead.

Why not simply make your game have better new activities rather than having to prop them up by making existing ones less rewarding?

I think the question above is really what makes people sour. You should design it so the new stuff is so fun to do that they willingly leave, not use the stick on people who pay to play your game.

I don’t really find condi cleanse issues a thing as long as I have alchemy and EG.

I always considered rifle a mid range weapon. A lot of its big hitting skills need you to get in close. The problem is, if I skill 5 in for a quick blunderbus and then acid bomb out…. will my drones have kept up?

I loved the thematic idea of the scrapper. It does feel like something different than what I’ve been playing.

things I noted
1) that number 3 hammer skill, has caused me multiple plumetting deaths. It is not safe to use around heights. Its very cool in “feel” but not reliable in execution. How was it supposed to work?

2) How the heck am I supposed to multi leap a field with it?

3) Sometimes it randomly picks an opponent and jumps me towards them… but I didn’t have the opponent targetted and don’t have auto target on. Where as in PvE I can use rifle 5 and carefully aim so I’m not going into combat speed. This is not possible with the 3 skill. It will tag something and I’ll be slowed when I was trying to go faster.

4) The blast the lightening field doesn’t seem to provide superspeed for very long, I found that to be a pretty useless trait. I had thought it would be an awesome combo with the regen for sustain but … it just wasn’t working for me.

5) I often found myself having to camp my mortar kit since I don’t have rifle, and the ground I wanted to attack was covered in condi’s.

6) I found the reflecting shield somewhat non useful because by the time it finally showed up, I’d been hit. If I tried to anticipate the attack it was down before the first shot got in. Its not very use-able aside from getting lucky with the reflect, but the delays made it feel not very good for counterplay. I just sort of started hitting it and hoped someone would shoot something as an added bonus to the damage, rather than using it specifically to reflect.

7) I guess I just didn’t really feel confident that this scrapper guy could actually last sustained melee. Had to keep escaping. I would have liked him to scrap a bit more.

8) sort of felt a bit slow on the regular 1. swings. Damage I’m not an expert on but I’d like to see him swing a bit faster.

9) I tried the synergy with the flame thrower, there was some promise there having juggernaut and the might trait, plus damage reduction.

10) didn’t see a lot of synergy with bomb kit. I tried to get around needing elixers, but that’s a tough sell. a melee class without speed doesn’t work, so you want to take tools for speedy kits, with the regent trait, and the damage reduction, leaving you with either firearms or explosions. Kind of seemed too comrpomisy since you can’t now keep your might up and your damage is reduced by not having bombs and firearms.

" PvP Conquest will require a guild team—or several guild teams—to work together to kill a certain amount of players on or near capture points. PvP Conquest is also an example of the new progress-style missions we’re adding. Progress missions will require you to incrementally advance a progress bar to complete the mission."

So how can I incrementally do this as a single player guild? I don’t have 5 people to be a guild team right? I’m Pick upping and individually representing my guild. Will this be possible?

What happens to upgrades currently being researched when the switch happens?

I am going to now try to pay gold to get my personal guild to upgrade to deep cave for storage with my existing influence…. But if I am currently building and you do the switch, what happens to my upgrade?

If I just have the architecture upgrade and have a personal guild, how do I think unlock the actual cave?

yeah I’’m really hoping there’s some good bomb and scrapper synergy that can be put to use so that I can actually survive when using bombs and have those bombs actually do something while I do.

I sorta like to pair rifle with bombs though to give me the midrange and CC aspects of the weapon, not sure I want to give that up for the hammer.

MrForz.1953:

Well. let’s be honest, your Rifle is already a mix of Melee and Range despite being the weapon with the second highest range in our armory. The hammer puts the accent on the melee part.

The problem is you can’t switch between them.

Are they making being able to use bomb kit any more competitive? Where’s the source so I can check if my bombs will get some love.

why does force not add much?

So what Scrapper traits synergize well with a power rifle build and the scrapper trait line?

I have seen switching used multiple times because I PUG. With better players, I will see 2 rangers or 2 theives have one of them switch out. It is quite important even if not looking at the opposing teams roster.