Anet, what are you doing? [Rare Materials Trader]

I'm sure everyone's come to know and love the infamous rare material trader by now--the same guy buyers base their prices on, and busybodies like shouting in retort to low buy prices.

Well, something funny I've noticed. Recently, when a friend of mine tried to sell an ectoplasm to the merchant, he was only offered -100- gold for it. Apparently, the trader didn't want any more. The fun part? Current prices were at 11,000G EACH.

Now, tell me, if the merchant sets prices based on supply, why does Anet force him to have more demand than supply? This does, in effect, increase the prices drastically while increasing this "Percieved need to farm" as eloquently put in a recent statement. Anet has total control over the buying price at the merchant, so my question is this. Why? Why are you forcing prices to rise? Isn't this against your "code" of play?

I don't understand this. If anyone can help shed some light on the situation I'd much appreciate it.

The prices he sells at and the prices he buys at are constantly fluctuating and not connected to each other at all IMO, which is totally different from most games traders.

Same thing happened to me last night when I tried to sell a glob. I thought maybe it was because they created some new script that only lets you sell uw and fow materials while america had favor. But apparently that isn't it......

I'm a little confused by your statements. But if I understand you correctly, the merchant offers 100g for your 'farmed' ecto but you can buy one from him for 11p?

If so, I think this drastically decreases the perceived need to farm since the benefits are very minimal.

buhuhu i can only sell a steel ingot for 30gp and the merchant himself sells them for over the 300gp

There is some trigger point, however, that this occurs. I've seen prices jump from 3k+ on shards to 100g in an instant, then up to 3k again at the next fluctuation period. If prices are tied in any way to supply, then this is seriously not helping at all. If they're independent from supply, then my question of why the prices are allowed to rise this high still stands. It's ridiculous to have to pay 10k+ for one item (especially when you want 30+ of them)

I'm looking to buy an armor that needs these items. Which means if I really want it, I need to increase my farming by a large amount. Otherwise I should give up, which I wouldn't like to do.

-edit: forgot to mention that other people WILL buy these at these prices and waiting prices out isn't going to happen, as they'll stay high or rise-

Not true - People will buy them. I saw people buying for 8 - 8.5k last night. the trader was at 10k

I've never seen the sell-to-merchant price any higher than 100g. I always thought it was preset.

I use/mistake Merchant for Trader. All transactions occured at the trader.

My bad

I sold a ruby the other day to a trader for 8k. Then, a day later I sold a glob for 4k. And last night, a glob was only worth 100.

I too have notcied this whats going on? Did Anet Nerf material prices to stop material farmers or what?

There is a difference between selling to a MERCHANT and the RARE meterial TRADER. The merchant has a FIXED price for everything the TRADER does NOT.

I think the dramatic price drop is just a "nudge" from Anet to inspire you to pay close attention to price fluctuations. That's what I think.

So how does this semi economy work though? The way i understand things work in real life:

The more people want to BUY an item the higher the prices go up [DEMAND]
The more people want to SELL an item the lower the prices go [SUPPLY]
The fluctuation between SUPPLY & DEMAND will either raise/lower a price.

Now how is supply and demand determined in GW? Lets assume the following:

1. Players never sell their items at the Trader.
(a) they will either hoard it, like me , for later use
(b) expect very poor prices [100g vs 11plat to buy it]
(c) rather sell it to other players for 10plat

2. Players will more often BUY at the trader than SELL at the trade [see point 1].

So isn't it inevitable that from the TRADER's viewpoint that DEMAND will go skyhigh and will go on up and up. There will NEVER be a "realistic" supply. The only supply will be purely based on whatever GW-devs coded it. I would assume this can only be

1. Based on how many items are in the game as whole [i.e. counting all player inventory]
and/or

2. Based on a droprate/rarity [set by devs]

or

3. Some arbitrary hardcoded amount.

or [and what i'm really asking]

4. Based on sales made directly to traders/merchants.


....anyone know? Something is fishy

Whenever he only offers me 100g, I come back later. The price is nearly always fluctuating. If he keeps trying to give me 100g all night, I wait until the next day. It's usually back to a more "normal" amount then.

Something is fishy! The trader sells an item for 10k, so the demand is very high. But he is only willing to pay 100g to the person, who gives him his supply? He wants to sell an item for 10k and only pays 100g for it ?

Yep, that's the problem ._. Unfortunately, there is no other way to get these items other than farming the underworld, which by money/time is a less efficient way for me to get them... So either Anet has to increase drop rate dramatically, or fix this stupid merchant.

*$@#%*^(!!!
How the hell am I going to sell platinum to IGE if this continues!!!
oops...did I post that?

Works well for me...I bought 50 ectos from the merchant at 8k a piece and sold them all a few days ago, when prices were hitting 13.5k per ecto.