Curse

Drakron · Jul 14, 2005, 02:19 PM // 14:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Narcissus

You are an idiot if you think the hp penalty on majors and superiors deters people from using them. Vigor runes exist for a reason.

It does, people run expecialized builds are at most they will use 3 superior runes with only one being a -75 superior and load up on ninors.

Quote:

[Translation] Over A month ago prices for runes were insanely high because there was no point of reference for supply and demand. People just looked for the words superior, fire, vigor, healing, sword etc and tacked on zeroes as they saw fit since there was no way to tell how many other people were selling the same rune and prices were not at all competetive. Hi, I like to go shopping with a blindfold on.

Now farming is no longer a neccessity since runes are readily available at super low prices and people DON"T have to grind for the things that they need to play the game at peak efficiency.

Life sucks now. Whaaah. [/translation]

And now its you that are a idiot.

Runes are near worthless with this prices because people simply sell then back to the trader, what happens with these prices is people either start hoarding then for other characters or simply destroy then, they are almost not worth the ID and salvage cost, I rather ditch most runes for a blue item since I get more from the item.

What happens then because supply and demand, if people dont sell then the price goes up again but because of the large diference of buying-selling prices of the rune trader people will simply either farm for then or buy then from players, nobody is going to sell then to the trader because of the low selling prices and THAT will bring the reference price even higher and we end up exactly were we were a month ago, the trader is simply not a option because of this buying prices.

That is why I said we need minimun prices and as people pointed out traders buying price being closer to his selling price so he remains a selling option and players have a steady source of gold income.

Theos · Jul 14, 2005, 02:22 PM // 14:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silmor

You think/speculate it will benefit everyone. I propose that it won't, in fact that it will hurt the game immensely. And until ArenaNet implements this terrible suggestion, and the economy really goes to hell, you people will continue to argue that if only they would follow up on this suggestion, everything will be magically fixed!

I have the feeling your still looking at bumping up drop rates, when I think what people really want is a much more statistically correct traders that have a more mathematically correct setup. Though I may be wrong :P

Dazzler · Jul 14, 2005, 02:23 PM // 14:23

So I liked to collect wood and tanned hides and turn them into parchment and leather and sell to the material trader (I don't like selling to players). I would just collect as I adventured and salvaged what I found.

It costs me 50gp + 5 tanned hides to make one leather. It costs me 1-2 expert salvages to get 5 tanned hides (400/25 * 1-2) = 16-32g. So my total cost for 1 leather would be 50 + 16-32, let's call it 74g on average. This does not include the cost of the item salvaged (anywhere from 5gp - 30gp). Let's call it 20gp. That pushes the average cost of leather production to 94gp.

I would go to the material trader and sell 10 leather for anywhere from 900 - 1500gp. Average, 1200gp. That would make me a profit of (120-94) 26gp per leather on average. And since I sold to the trader and not people, it also helped to lower the overall price of leather that people need to buy and don't have.

In short, I made a small profit for my efforts, and other people benefitted from lower prices. Win win for everyone.

Now I can't do that b/c the material trader is only offering 500gp for 10 leather. I will no longer sell and will no longer produce, but will just horde the raw materials or quit salvaging and sell the items to the merchant where they just vanish. Others will do the same, the material trader cost of leather will rise and the ppl that DO sell leather on the open market will start charging more for it.

Suckage.

EmperorTippy · Jul 14, 2005, 02:23 PM // 14:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silmor

You think/speculate it will benefit everyone. I propose that it won't, in fact that it will hurt the game immensely. And until ArenaNet implements this terrible suggestion, and the economy really goes to hell, you people will continue to argue that if only they would follow up on this suggestion, everything will be magically fixed!

I never said it would be magicaly fixed. Offer a counter suggestion if you would be so kind. What do you think shoud be done to fix the economy? If you think that anything is even wrong with it. And if you beleive that nothing is wrong with it explain why you beleive so. I will personally take your ideads to heart and take a truly neutral look at all of them and attempt to offer an unbiased view but if you don't post the why then I have nothing to compare.

Silmor · Jul 14, 2005, 02:26 PM // 14:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theos

I have the feeling your still looking at bumping up drop rates, when I think what people really want is a much more statistically correct traders that have a more mathematically correct setup.

No, I'm talking about the 85/90% suggestion. Prices in GW fluctuate way more and way more predictably than in real-life economies, so a higher buying percentage just means begging for the traders to be exploited - the only 'risk' you take is around updates from ArenaNet that might influence the trader, as we've seen yesterday.

I personally don't care about statistically correct traders if they only benefit the rich and shaft the poor.

EmperorTippy, the economy goes to hell mostly because people are greedy and selfish. ArenaNet probably can't implement any way short of removing gold from the economy entirely to 'fix' it, what they can do is damage control. Better player mentality is what could fix the economy, but since everyone loves exploiting things for their personal gain, oblivious to the consequences for others, since everyone only cares about their own personal interests and puts the responsibility for what happens to the game entirely in ArenaNet's hands, that probably won't happen. The mentality is "I'll abuse what I want, as long as it's possible - if ArenaNet doesn't want me to do it, why don't they stop me?"

EmperorTippy · Jul 14, 2005, 02:31 PM // 14:31

Any system besides communisim benifits the rich and shafts the poor to some degree or another

even in computer games

Theos · Jul 14, 2005, 02:38 PM // 14:38

Actually the way the idea was put forth by garrick don't think it would benifit the rich much, if at all. The only way to really make the rich on par with everyone else is to take their money away, which won't happen. Got to really face it that the rich will remain rich unless they pull of some dumb manuever...

Dazzler · Jul 14, 2005, 02:44 PM // 14:44

Well, Silmor, the current system is broken. I gave a Real GWorld example above. I will no longer sell to the trader b/c his bid price is lower than the cost of manufacture for no other reason than an artificial ceiling. Even a 50% bid/ask ratio is just too much.

However, I do understand your concern that with a small ratio, people with alot of money can too easily play the market and get rich due to price fluctuations.

I only see one way to "solve" both problems: some sort of price fixing. Either just fix the prices completely like they are at the Merchant, so that you always know what something is worth and it never changes (as long as the bid prices are above the cost of production so that ppl have incentive to create supply), or put a dampening effect on price changes so that if someone wanted to play the market, they would have to take advantage of a long term trend in order to make money.

Right now the trader has an algorithm to come up with a price and that is what he charges for stuff. Perhaps this "price" is kept intetrnal and invisible and instead the price he shows us is a 1 day (or more) moving average of the internally calculated price. This would wipe out any brief spikes but would allow prices to change over time as supply and demand changes.

EmperorTippy · Jul 14, 2005, 02:49 PM // 14:49

Like the idea dazzler. The point is though that the trader needs to increase buy prices so that people will sell to him/her. So that players can afford the items the nerfs also have to decrease so that more gold is added, but this needs to be combined with well thought out and planned gold sinks to counteract the inflation.

Theos · Jul 14, 2005, 02:50 PM // 14:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dazzler

Well, Silmor, the current system is broken. I gave a Real GWorld example above. I will no longer sell to the trader b/c his bid price is lower than the cost of manufacture for no other reason than an artificial ceiling. Even a 50% bid/ask ratio is just too much.

However, I do understand your concern that with a small ratio, people with alot of money can too easily play the market and get rich due to price fluctuations.

I only see one way to "solve" both problems: some sort of price fixing. Either just fix the prices completely like they are at the Merchant, so that you always know what something is worth and it never changes (as long as the bid prices are above the cost of production so that ppl have incentive to create supply), or put a dampening effect on price changes so that if someone wanted to play the market, they would have to take advantage of a long term trend in order to make money.

Right now the trader has an algorithm to come up with a price and that is what he charges for stuff. Perhaps this "price" is kept intetrnal and invisible and instead the price he shows us is a 1 day (or more) moving average of the internally calculated price. This would wipe out any brief spikes but would allow prices to change over time as supply and demand changes.

Ok I agree with making the Traders more like an average price change and not a spike. Yes people will be able to play but in playing it this way they take more of a risk because on an average non algoritmic scale the fluxation is completly unpredictable (hence fixing the math). Also if people to hit it big it will be the exact same as the stock market today, its all chance you can't blame someone for being lucky. So I agree with Dazzler to make it short :P

Zeroed · Jul 14, 2005, 02:52 PM // 14:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by EmperorTippy

Like the idea dazzler. The point is though that the trader needs to increase buy prices so that people will sell to him/her. So that players can afford the items the nerfs also have to decrease so that more gold is added, but this needs to be combined with well thought out and planned gold sinks to counteract the inflation.

but people are still selling to the trader, even at these levels for the convenience. So there is no need to change it. If people stop selling to the trader, then the price given will go up.

Silmor · Jul 14, 2005, 02:58 PM // 14:58

Well, we can all agree that the traders currently offering bottom prices for everything is just silly and needs to be addressed. This hurts new (poor) players more than anyone else, because they can't sell their goods for anything right now. I think the current ratio (60%-75% or so?) works nicely, and dampening the amplitude and frequency of price shifts like you suggest would remove most of the playing the automated market incentive. People will still be able to offer their goods to other players for 80-90% of what the trader sells for to 'play the market' (undercutting the NPC), but since that involves bartering with other players you can't exactly buy/sell in bulk like with the automated market.

As it was before the update, you could buy for instance 500 green dye for 140g, then wait until evening and sell them all for 200g. 60g profit per bottle on a 140g investment, that's a 42% profit margin on every gold piece you invest. Easy money, and all of it coming from casual players who were just buying green dye for their new 30 ac armour, going right into the pockets of people who already have a few multiples of 100k. Nobody called that 'broken' because it wasn't hurting their pockets.

EmperorTippy · Jul 14, 2005, 02:59 PM // 14:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeroed

but people are still selling to the trader, even at these levels for the convenience. So there is no need to change it. If people stop selling to the trader, then the price given will go up.

Compare the price to what it was about 3 updates ago. Black dye averaged 2.5-3K a piece to buy at the trader. Every update ANet has increaded the difference between the buying and selling prices for almost all items. (If you track the markets you would have noticed this). The price rise hasn't been from any deliberate patch on ANets post but because less people are selling to the trader because of the price differences.

EmperorTippy · Jul 14, 2005, 03:04 PM // 15:04

Silmore the market is at about 56% last time I checked (about 2 hours ago). Just to let you know.

The thing with the playing the market quickly is that everyone is happy. The new player bought his dye cheap so hes happy the market player is happy because he made the gold. The farmer is happy baceause the price of their find is worth more. etc. I personally play the markets over the long hall (2-3 days some times even a week or more) and only played them in the quick early on.

Dazzler · Jul 14, 2005, 03:12 PM // 15:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silmor

Well, we can all agree that the traders currently offering bottom prices for everything is just silly and needs to be addressed. This hurts new (poor) players more than anyone else, because they can't sell their goods for anything right now. I think the current ratio (60%-75% or so?) works nicely, and dampening the amplitude and frequency of price shifts like you suggest would remove most of the playing the automated market incentive. People will still be able to offer their goods to other players for 80-90% of what the trader sells for to 'play the market' (undercutting the NPC), but since that involves bartering with other players you can't exactly buy/sell in bulk like with the automated market.

And that is how it should be.Selling to players takes effort and time and should be rewarded with a profit over the trader price. Yet ppl that don't like to spend that time b/c they find it boring and would rather go kill stuff (like me) can sell to the trader at a reasonable price. The ~75% ratio that was in effect before the update seemed to work nicely.

Quote:

As it was before the update, you could buy for instance 500 green dye for 140g, then wait until evening and sell them all for 200g. 60g profit per bottle on a 140g investment, that's a 42% profit margin on every gold piece you invest. Easy money, and all of it coming from casual players who were just buying green dye for their new 30 ac armour, going right into the pockets of people who already have a few multiples of 100k. Nobody called that 'broken' because it wasn't hurting their pockets.

Yeah and by smoothing the price curve to eliminate short term price fluctuations you get rid of that "problem" and if ppl want to play the market strictly by dealing with the trader they will have to make a long term bet, which less people will be willing to do.

Dazzler · Jul 14, 2005, 03:22 PM // 15:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by EmperorTippy

Silmore the market is at about 56% last time I checked (about 2 hours ago). Just to let you know.

The thing with the playing the market quickly is that everyone is happy. The new player bought his dye cheap so hes happy the market player is happy because he made the gold. The farmer is happy baceause the price of their find is worth more. etc. I personally play the markets over the long hall (2-3 days some times even a week or more) and only played them in the quick early on.

The long term effects of playing the market quickly are rising inflation and consolidation of the wealth among a smaller number of people. The market players have more disposable income earned quickly and easily and thus can pay more for the uber equipment (or uber gold sinks since all the fancy armor is just a bunch of gold sinks), driving their prices up out of the range of suckers that bought green dye at the higher price. They then get on these forums and complain about how the price of FoW armor is now over 1 million. When I decided I wanted FoW armor, I had just bought my 15k armor. Back then, the FoW cost including materials was about 500k. I had only 20k at the time. So I have been finding ways to make money and am now sitting on 200k only to find that the FoW cost has gone up to over 1000k. In short, inflation is creating a moving target for me that I will never reach as the price is going up faster than I can make money, especially now that I can't sell to the trader and must spam WTS everywhere.

If eliminating the short-term Trader price game will help reduce inflation then I am all for it--but only if it is done in an intelligent way, unlike the current situation.

Seriously, when I logged on last night to try and sell some stuff and saw the bid prices I immediately thought of you and your "plan" to crash the economy and I thought "Holy shit, I gave him a hard time but he really pulled it off!"

dinglenut · Jul 14, 2005, 03:29 PM // 15:29

I think a market flood is needed, where gold drops like the rare weapons, and everything else drops weapons, armor's etc to flood the market of the people selling gold crystaline swords for 500k....if you flood the market the prices drop and Anet should do so that casual joe can have the items he wants.

There is no uber weapons in the game, but there are item basically unobtainable by the casual gamer. There in lies the problem of making everything available to the players unlike diablo. If they flood the drops for say 2 weeks, prices on everything drops back to normal price. then it goes back up after "drop season" instead of nerfing drops they need to increase overall drops of items and lessen the gold drops to encourage selling to the npc's to stabalize prices.

EmperorTippy · Jul 14, 2005, 03:30 PM // 15:30

LOL That wasn't me. Stuff seemed to be coming in to line except for Ectos but then this update happened and everything got thrown out of wack again.

I agree that the short term market playing should be stopped but at the same time no more ANet ruining the entire economy with no rhyme or reason and no warning. If the economy remains generaly stable and you know what you are doing you have about a 75% sucess rate at playing the market and capitalizing on those minior spikes that occur. The problem is at the moment you almost have to play the short term markets because of the massive price fluxuations.

A real reduce to inflation even though it won't go over to well is to stop the drops in HoH. Thats 60K minimum added per win. with a win every about 15-20 miniutes on average that is pretty big inflation.

EDIT: Yes that was my thread and I knew what you were refering to.

Dazzler · Jul 14, 2005, 03:35 PM // 15:35

This was your thread wasn't it?
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=24605

That's what I was referring to.

wiz12268 · Jul 14, 2005, 03:35 PM // 15:35

Basically it comes down to this...

After you have played all your characters to the end of the game or 3 and a PvP slot, then what is there to do? You have finished the game, and unless you have great luck or a better guild you won't be PvPing in the high arenas all that much. Or maybe you don't like Pvp at all.

So the only other goal is to get the full set of fissure armor. So that is basically the reason to continue playing the game. But even then it starts to get boring doing endless UW/FOW runs over and over again. Waiting to get favor. I see TOA full with people just sitting and waiting, rather than playing the game until Favor is won. (not in the spirit of the game IMO)

But if you aren't trying to get the armor then you have no reason to play the game anymore, at least PvE. Once you get everything, and have seen everything, then the game is basically done for you.

Granted, the old people got what they wanted early and easilly. But they will eventually leave the game because there is nothing more for them to accomplish. Why do you play a game? To attain a certain level or to finish it usually.

That is why all the other games got stale as well. At least with D2 they made getting to lev 99 nearly impossible, and getting there one had to do about 5000 throne runs, which is basically mind numbing.

So in every game there is a threshhold. If you simply PLAY the game you can make 25-30K by picking up everything and selling it to merchants, or salvaging and selling materials by the time you finish the game. I have only been playing the game for 6 weeks, don't scam or run the economy loop holes, and I own my own guild hall, have a few pieces of "regular" 15K armor, and I also have some decent weapons that I FOUND, PLAYING the game. I also have about 65K between the 3 PvE character I have, and I am not halfway thru the game with my third.

I have done a few FOW and UW runs, and I was selling all my shards and ectos off, but haven't sold an ecto since they were about 4K. I have sold maybe 15 Shards, and that basically paid for the guild hall I have.

So PLAYING the game is basically the best way to get the things you want. Godly this, and Godly that. Who cares? 95% of the people playing the game can't differentiate between the good and the bad by looks alone.

But if you PLAY the game you can get all the thing you want/need. Rather than wasting a few hours spamming for stuff to make money through loopholes, PLAY the game. If you don't want to do that go on Ebay or whatever and spend 50 bux real life (about the price of the game) and get a few million gold. Saves the time and energy of whining and complaing about it. Then you can buy all the ectos and shard you want, get your killer weapon, and stop playing, because you don't have anything left to play for. To me it makes more sense to play the game.

I find it a lot more exciting running through old maps and seeing purple or gold items drop and iding them than sitting around looking to buy something from someone in town. The only time I buy anything is if I am in a hurry and need a few materials for the armor, and only if I can't go and craft it with existing stuff outside Fort Ranick. (although I did buy my sigil for the guild hall, but only after a couple failed attempts at PUG runs in HoH)

But that is the catch, what do you do with those items you find? Can you sell them, or do they clutter you up? I sell a lot of stuff actualy to other players. But I still hold a lot of stuff still. But sooner or later someone needs what I have and I sell it. If they aren't great I will either salvage the componet, or simply sell it for whatever the merchant will pay. It shouldn't be about making money.

Money is worthless for the most part. If you PLAY the game and find your own shards or ectos, then you only need 60K,(75 for a few warrior armors) and if you PLAY long enough to find the ectos and shards you need only for the chest piece, you will easilly have 100K from simply PLAYING the game. So that leaves you some left to buy enough ectos/shard to get a second piece (or at least would have before ectos went through the roof)

The shard and ecto prices are being made because people have nothing else to do but get that primo armor. They have finished the game, and don't do PvP all that much, so they want to look good. All the guys complaining about the pricing will be the first ones to STOP playing the game as soon as they get that armor, because there simply isn't anything left for them to do in the game.

The smartest thing Arenanet could do is make a few more maps. Granted they do everything they do FOR FREE, so complaining about it at all is assinine in the first place, but they are trying to keep the game fresh, and from getting stale. Short of an expansion pack (which is doubtful considering the game is less than a year old) then doing the upgrades and possibly adding a few maps is all they can do.

So as it is, considering it is free, then I have no problem with what Arenanet is doing. If anything they are making the game too easy. It has steered away from a comunity game, and gone into a more solo game, because you can now do every mission just about with henches but that is another topic for another time.

Just PLAY the game, and stop worrying about who can out gain who. No one knows how long you took to get your armor, or if you paid high and are stuck selling low. Making money not playing the game is a waste of time. Because for some of you that seemed to be the reason to play. Now that you can't do it the game is no more fun. I think Arenanet wants people to play and have a goal (other than amassing gold) to their gameplay.