Constructive complaint. (Temple of Ages)

Well A.net, I love you.. but now there is a problem..

Since you have nerfed the amount of gold that can drop bots can't get it as fast.. but thats good because they can sell it for more, so they are still happy.

but now.. the bots are doing a new thing to get gold faster.. and its faster then botting.. They are farming the UW for ectos.. then selling them to the trader. this nets them gold faster then they can get it farming.. and is crashing the ecto market.... Anyone notice how ectos at the trader go up to 7.5k then are back down to 7? ..

I have a UK GW accont.. and I farm ectos for about an hour a day or so (between 1-6 ectos per day or so) (Dont flame guys, its the only way to affroed the mini pets that a.net gives out, and it still takes me 60 something days of farming to even buy one..) so I hang out in English 1 of ToA pretty often... Well.. Now all the bots that used to farm gold.. now farm the UW, get ectos.. then sell them to the merchant for 5.5k (or to people for 6k) .... This is keeping the ecto trader very low in price as he's flooded with ectos...

The bots then sell the gold online. 2 weeks ago.. You never saw a Chinese bot in the ToA.. now you see close to a constant stream of them. .. and its geeting worse by the day.

So because you lowerd the amount of gold bots can grab from botting, they are now being controled by people and farming ectos for gold because its faster to get an ecto, then sell to the trader.

its only going to get worse.. However I have deffently found out that the trader is capped at 7k.. he can't go lower. .. and he never goes above 7.5k because bots sell ectos to the trader constantly.

If you need proof, go to ToA English 1. and just stand next to Grenth.. watch the endless stream of necros and monk 2 man teams with Ramdon letters and weird names (Exactly like bots) that go though... 2 weeks ago.. all the names and people in the ToA where normal farmers.. with Normal names.
Oh, then just go to Lions arch and watch the trader.. you'll see (Botty) monks and nec's come to the trader and dump ectos on him.


So whats the plan? I would like you to please bring back normal gold drops so bots can bot their gold like normal and stop farming ectos for cash.

Well thats my vote anyway..

Sorry for spelling and grammer.. my english isn't good.

oh also I mean to say that the nec's and monks are controled by people.. the names are botlike in nature. (Not naming any names but you know what I mean)

There is no cap for the traders, they can sell ecto for 100 gold if the circumstances take drastic actions.

I hope you're right - that would be hilarious. If the same thing happened to shards, you'd be sitting at full FoW for 81k plus a few extra random materials. =D The resulting complaints would be comedy gold.

Go bots go! Deflation FTW!

Count on A.Net to make another crappy update which nobody likes that will bring the ecto prices even higher.

They need to be higher. Its a high end item. As long as they dont put them back into the loot scalling im ok.

I own a couple sets of Fow, and I personally wouldn't be bothered by this at all. Just a chance for me to get a set for each of my characters.

The game is going to hell anyway, so GO BOTS GO!

To stop the madness of worthless Ectos, they need to put back the anti-farming code for Ectos. Even if it's only put back for Ectos and nothing else. Not loot scaling though, just the anti-farming code.

Botters have always been in GW. And as long as THE PLAYERS choose to spend their money buying gold for real world money they always will.

Botters don't ruin the economy, they never have. If the economy is effected in any way by the actions of these people its root cause is the people who pay them to make mindless automated runs 15 hours a day.

Who knows where this will lead..

Anyway I guess that when GW2 comes out you will find the botters will move with the people. Potentially GW1 could become a cheap purchase to get as much cash out of the product as possible and the economy might support the botters for a while but they will move to GW2 and the same situation will carry on.

Blame the people.. they are usually responsible for everything

I love all this talk about "worthless ectos." Ectos were at the 7k mark for a LONG time before NF came out. They only spiked up to 10k in the past 6 months. Guess what, the world didn't end when ectos were that cheap nor did they end when prices spiked up as high as they did.
Most of the people complaining about the ecto price drop haven't been playing long enough to remember the old days to realize that price flucuation is normal and will happen.

Agreed. Before Factions released ectos were fluctuating between 5k and 7k for a few months, before that they were at about 10k and even higher. The recent stabilization of ecto prices that has existed for the past few months has been quite the anomaly. It has been my observation that ecto prices rise and fall based on the perception of their value far more then the amount of them in circulation, and rite now it is not the bots that are driving the prices down, it’s the traders of ectos who are in a mass panic falsely caused by the last update. Same thing happened right before Factions when everyone assumed ectos would become worthless because of the new armors about to be released. Prices plummeted as people panicked. Shortly after Factions released, and people realized that nothing had really changed, prices began to climb again. Basically ecto prices are falling because people think they are going to be worth less in the future, not because there are more of them in the economy. I seriously doubt that the amount of ectos a bot could farm could have any chance of affecting the economy so drasticaly. How far could a bot really get in UW? Not very far I would think. Given the limited amount of kills a bot might manage in UW, and given that it would cost that bot 1k per run, I can't imagine that it is worth it to them.

this happens everytime ecto price rises and drops. seriously its normal and i laugh everytime i see a thread about "omg ecto price dropped" no it just went back to a steady 7-8k

Dude 7-8K is pretty much the regular price of ectos.

This isn't a complaint about ToA, it's about the problem of bots starting to farm ectos. o_O

To the OP:

Nicely made points.

I would just counter that we don't truly know why the prices are the way they are at the Vendors.

You are using it as an indicator of "bot" activity, while I can see it as an expected outcome of more concentrated high end loot drops for large number of players now that Hard Mode is out and popular.

I think that we are just witnessing a market change <if there actually has been a market change> based on the recent big update. This isn't to say that there aren't bot accounts, but even if you saw 15-20 bona fide "bots" that doesn't necessarily mean that there are enough to impact prices overall. At best it's argumentative, at worst it's just not accepting that prices for things are changing in a more or less permanent fashion due to Hard Mode and the Loot impact.

they definitely need to change something about ecto, like put anti-farming back in. I can see the ecto prices drop continually, until they're either worthless, or Anet have to step in and change something...

I think this is a good thing. I believe this will level the playing field for everyone. If ecto prices drop really, really low, more people can afford FoW armor, and the uber rich players are now not as rich, bringing them closer to the casual and average players. who wants to sell a really rare minipet or weapon for 500 ectos when ectos aren't worth that much? Crafting materials DO NOT need to be used as currency.

I hope this also keeps happening with rare skin drops. That way people will play with the skins they love, not the ones that are uber rare in order to make players jealous or think they are better than them.

@ Tarzan: Communism FTW

To be honest, this is very similar to what real economy is like.. minus the bots. It changes constantly. Right now we are experienceing a "depression" of sorts. Since the game is over producing rare items, which causes prices to drop. Which makes the value of gold go up, making less money circulate thoughout the game.

It's happened thoughout the "Guild Wars history" I've been here since the beginning where a perfect 10/10 Sundering Mod could go for 50k+. Now a perfect 20/20 Sundering Mod goes for 15k.

FYI to all of you that are going crazy over the ectos. I'm personally buying all the ectos I can. Right now the market is in a steady fall. When GW;EN comes out Ecto prices will rise due to the rarity of new items.

After Factions was announced but Before it was released, Ectos dropped down to 7.5k area, Same thing with NF, Now EotN was recently announced and the same thing happened. Ever though that maybe it's not bots, it's people that where saving for Fow decided, "I'm gonna wait and see what the armor in EotN look like" and sold all their ectos & shards? Watch, 2 or 3 mths after EotN is released, Ectos will go back up.

couldnt agree more it is goign no where

if u want a real game play wow its worht the monthly fee

They already said there won't be new proffessions in eye of the north, so no new obsidian armor for new classes....

I think people are selling it because they know there won't be any other obisidian armors, eotn will have new armors wich materials are yet unknown and for all we know they could require glittering dust.
I think a lot of people are cahsing in their ectos to get the cash they can use to buy the new armors from eotn.

Also would be funny if bots actually lowerd ecto and shard prizes down so that obsidian armor became cheaper, then i'd might consider it.
(as it is now i'd rahter have 1 set of 15k armor for my every char then 1 obisidan.)