Does the Armbrace market matter, really?

It's 2 weeks until GW:EN, and with the subtle graphics power creep introduced with expansions, the weapon graphics in GW:EN will likely blow the Tormented weapons away.

Plus, Tormented weapons can't be used with the Hall of Monuments.

The only big deal I see, besides the whole philosophical quandries and the existance of a dupe glitch, is people who invested Ectos into Armbraces and mostly lost their money. How rampant is that?

"graphics power creep"?

wtf?

Lol @ rich people.

What I meant is tha the graphics generally become better with each expansion...

well sad for the people that actually paid for ambrace fairly (not the greedy one's that bought 1750 ambraces, they deserve to burn in...), but it's in the past, and you got to move on. Heck they have two weeks, make the most out of it.

Unless you're getting free runes and insignias, no it doesn't matter.

I'm not sure the real damage is the armbrace market - they just got greedy and were caught because of armbraces.

This exploits, it seems, has been possible since December. I would strongly suspect they tried it first on ectos, black dye and rare materials. These are stackable items and would have been the most efficient to duplicate. This would explain the rapid drop in ecto prices. And this would have had a tremendous effect on the market. It would have driven prices on things people were farming for their "living expenses" way down (look at the impact ecto price has had on FoW and UW farmers - their income has been cut way back)

Meanwhile it gave the dupers unlimited cash to buy the high end items - keeping the price on those things very high.

Meanwhile ANet, responding to the wrong problem, continued to nerf farming locations (apparently assuming the cause of the problem was legitimate farmers who were actually working for their cash - and bots, I suppose)

So the average player/farmer's income was slashed even while dupers were literally printing cash.

In the end, I think they got stupid. With ectos worth only about 3.9k at the trader on many days, they decided to dupe something more expensive - armbraces. Or maybe one of the dupers finally got a character through DoA and got himself an armbrace for the first time. That was too big a move - people noticed and they got caught.

This is speculation of course but I can't imagine an exploit like that being available for more than a week or two before some hot shot teen hacker discovered it and I think it has been affecting the economy for the last 8 months.

Heck, it may have even caused ANet to implement loot scaling itself (I think that was implemented at least 3 or 4 months after the exploit became available) thinking that the high prices on many items were the fault of farmers when they were, in fact, the fault of dupers.

In any case, I don't think the armbracers were or are the problem. I think the months of duping before the armbracers was the real problem and has had a much greater impact on the economy.

They might be technically better, but not necesarily more desired or prettier or cooler.

People still craft prohecies armor for looks and some people still swear by Long Sword skin.

OFC, farming rush is something else, people will go farm new stuff because anyone wating to get old skins already got them or cant afford them, ever, so money are to be made with new things.

wonder how pimped the dupers heros are xD

A lot of money gets moved to things that were created outside the normal economy. It devalues those items and people automatically lose on their investment and it devalues the economy at the same time.

And indeed there are people who earned those things and to them and if things like this happen more often it can take the fun out of playing the game, meaning that people will stop playing.
Achievements should not be destroyed so easily or people stop wanting to achieve things in game in other words and thus will go somewhere where this doesn't happen, ie another game.

If exploits like this were to happen more often it could destroy the game. That seems like reason enough to care about it.

Investment?!

Items such as armbraces should never be seen as an investment, their price will always drop. Smart people know this, the rest get what they deserve.

While duping did destroy diablo 2, I think Guild Wars is a little more resilient to it. Character advancement in Guild Wars isn't heavily based on leetsauce items. Yes, a lot of players play for the farming and cool items, but a game exista outside of that. We have missions, vanquishing, titles, quests, and all manner of stuff that still remains reasonably fun if the economy breaks. In Diablo 2, pretty much the entire point of the game was getting a pimped out character with uber-powerful weapons. Breaking that broke the entire character progression model in that game.

The duping in Guild Wars certainly did screw up the market on a few high-end items, especially armbraces. At best, that ruins some of the farming in DOA. That certainly sucks, and it sucks to be one of the collectors who got screwed here, but it's hardly the end of the game. In fact, I'd bet 90% of players will barely notice.

I call it an investment because it requires a lot of resources to get it, not in the sense that you want to make money with it later.

And this single event will not destroy the game but if they do not act swiftly and brutally as they have when something like this happens, people will get the chance to ruin the game id this sort of thing were to become more common, that's all I am saying.

I doubt that Malice. The demand for tormented weapons will remain high until GW:EN comes out (in which case, new "uber" weapon skins will replace the demand for them). Techincially, they were still a good investment for short turn over. I mean, if you expected your armbrace to be worth more 5 years from now or something, that's stupid. But yes the armbrace could have been sold for slightly more in the course of 4-6 months. Not anymore due to dupeing of course.

No. Reason why..because as more and more people farm gems, the lower the price will be. Armbraces were always doomed in the long run. Nothing that is farmable is worth "investing" in.

I hope this is on topic. I think that more of the market was affected than people realized, and I'm pretty sure it was last minute stuff. About a week ago I got a sup derv rune and merched it for 500g. I got the same rune Sunday night and went to merch it around an hour before the update/ban. It was selling for 100g. I did not bother salvaging to see how much I could sell it for. If I had to guess, because posts came out describing the dupe trick, people took their most valuable items and tried it and drove down the prices of a lot of things at traders. I was dissappointed when I saw the devalue, and was surprised at how fast it devalued, but I did not suspect anything until I saw everything on the forum Monday. I've seen in other threads that this was not limitted to AoT. Does anyone know how widespread it became in its final moments? My rare materials stil held their value, but I haven't checked common materials. A lot of runes seem to have devalued, but others did not. Not being anywhere close to a high-end trader, I had never heard of an AoT before this fiasco. The AoT market means nothing to me. I make my gold in salvaging runes and rare materials. If those markets were damaged, then I would be in trouble. Any more info on how they are holding up?

QFT. The only reason to ever buy an AoT is if you want a Tormented item or if you can flip it immediately for a profit. Holding on to them is just a pip of degen on your wealth.

QFT. Most casual players did NOT notice.

When I logged in last night, somebody asked why the reconnect feature was disabled. That was the main worry, not that there were some duped items running around.

I know I've never even entered the DoA, much less gotten any Armbraces or traded anything for them.

Maybe someone is going to buy up mass AoT and Tormented weapons and delete them. That's the only way to raise their worth.

Since GWEN is the last expansion untill GW2 (or so they made me think), I guess they will put best weapons in it, to give people something to work for, till GW2 is here. So yeah, Tormented weapons will certanly fall in price and demand, but I asume they will still be 1337. But not "teh pwn" anymore.