640 replies to this topic

[XPhiler]

ReMarkable91, on 03 January 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

How is creating lvl 80 rares with t5 mates any different? Why are u so 100 % sure it was only this "exploit" that made those new ectos. There are thousands of ppl comming back for wintersday event getting t5 mates or rare/ecto drops into the game. They are not die hard so not going for legendary or ascanded backpiece or any other things. Ppl that bought 250 Ectos for 35 S a week before wintersday are just plain stupid.

And last of all how can you even not agree that this was a good thing for the market putting prices of easy obtainable items such as ori ores going up in price and Globs going down? Maybe the Mithril thing was bad never made it don't know exact recipe but believe it was made of the lower tier snowflake(wich went to 15 S I believe? wich is not the correct price.) But if you look at the currect price of it I belive it was 1 s 22 or so. And why that is the current price? Cause you can still create level 80 rare clothes/weapons with it with 10 of them. Wich is the same as any normal t5 mat wich take 15. How is making those non stop what probaly ppl are doing now any different?

Because when you create the t5 rare you dont get the materials used back if you salvage it. If you create 150 t5 rares and you salvage them (using that guys math)  You end up with enough money to craft another 18 items.  when you salvage that you end up able to create 2 new items. So with the t5 rares you can convert 150 items into 170 items. This on the other hand was an exploit because it gave you most of the ingredients it took to make it back allowing the person in that post to create 500 items out of 150 items.

Lets put it this way. t5 rare would be like buying a car for 10k and selling it as parts for 12k

This was an exploit because you buy the car for 10k, when you dismantle it for parts you were getting a rebate of 80% of the price but the goverement neglected taking the parts from you which you sell again for 12k. So then you think great! All I got to do is buy tons of cars and keep doing this over and over again.

You can do it using the first method as well but the profit is just too little and not worth the effort, it also requires a substantial investment. The 2nd method is quicker and doesnt require as big an investment.

I mean to me its pretty clear. If the t5 rare was the same thing, why wasnt this being done before this exploit came to light? why did the people who exploited feel they had to focus on this? clearly it had to be a lot more profitable.

As for prices going down, thats good for some, bad for others.

If you just want to get the mats to craft your gear ectos falling in price is a great thing. But what if you're a crafter? what if you're a farmer? What if you're simply a person selling loot? Think about it. If ectos cost 35s and you have a .9 chance of getting an ecto from salvaging a rare buying 2 rares for 20s makes sense. You pay 40s and you got average chance of getting 36s worth of ectos out of it. If you're lucky you get more, if you're unlucky you might get nothing out of it. But if ectos fall to 25s then why on earth would you pay 20s for a rare ? that would be bad business. What does that mean for the player who makes their money playing DE and selling drops? if he sells his rare for 20s it will not sell, no one is going to buy it because they need it, people buy it so they turn it into ectos.

Same thing for crafting. If you're a crafter you'll craft your t5 rare, salvage get ectos, craft the gear you know people want and sell it. What effects the price you can sell it at? Primarily the costs of the raw materials. If people can make the item a lot cheaper by buying the materials and crafting it themselves thats what they're going to do. If they cant craft it themselves you can be sure someone in their guild can. So what does that mean to a crafter? a 10s reduction in ecto price means an item that takes say 50ectos needs to be discounted by a whole 5g if s/he hopes to sell it.

The thing with a player run economy is changes effect different people. The problem with an exploit like this is while it may be advantages for people who want to aquire ectos, it destroys the game for those who depend on the supply of ectos. How would you feel if the activity you enjoy doing whatever that maybe would suddenly turn profitless because someone cheated?

[Gilles VI]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

How does that make even any sense... u wanna put price of abyss 1c lower and expect price to raise? And on top of that this raise of price somehow hurt people who bought it all for 5g and now reselling for those high prices?

You need to learn how to read..
I said undercutting the monopolist by 1c would lower the price.
And I never said people who bought it at 5 would be hurt, I said the monopolist who outbuys people at 14g99s to relist them at 15g will be hurt big time.

[duncanmix]

Gilles VI, on 03 January 2013 - 03:19 PM, said:

You need to learn how to read..
I said undercutting the monopolist by 1c would lower the price.
And I never said people who bought it at 5 would be hurt, I said the monopolist who outbuys people at 14g99s to relist them at 15g will be hurt big time.

Then you don't understand who is monopolist. Those who bought all dyes at 5g are monopolists.

[ReMarkable91]

XPhiler, on 03 January 2013 - 03:14 PM, said:

Because when you create the t5 rare you dont get the materials used back if you salvage it. If you create 150 t5 rares and you salvage them (using that guys math)  You end up with enough money to craft another 18 items.  when you salvage that you end up able to create 2 new items. So with the t5 rares you can convert 150 items into 170 items. This on the other hand was an exploit because it gave you most of the ingredients it took to make it back allowing the person in that post to create 500 items out of 150 items.

Lets put it this way. t5 rare would be like buying a car for 10k and selling it as parts for 12k

This was an exploit because you buy the car for 10k, when you dismantle it for parts you were getting a rebate of 80% of the price but the goverement neglected taking the parts from you which you sell again for 12k. So then you think great! All I got to do is buy tons of cars and keep doing this over and over again.

You can do it using the first method as well but the profit is just too little and not worth the effort, it also requires a substantial investment. The 2nd method is quicker and doesnt require as big an investment.

I mean to me its pretty clear. If the t5 rare was the same thing, why wasnt this being done before this exploit came to light? why did the people who exploited feel they had to focus on this? clearly it had to be a lot more profitable.

As for prices going down, thats good for some, bad for others.

If you just want to get the mats to craft your gear ectos falling in price is a great thing. But what if you're a crafter? what if you're a farmer? What if you're simply a person selling loot? Think about it. If ectos cost 35s and you have a .9 chance of getting an ecto from salvaging a rare buying 2 rares for 20s makes sense. You pay 40s and you got average chance of getting 36s worth of ectos out of it. If you're lucky you get more, if you're unlucky you might get nothing out of it. But if ectos fall to 25s then why on earth would you pay 20s for a rare ? that would be bad business. What does that mean for the player who makes their money playing DE and selling drops? if he sells his rare for 20s it will not sell, no one is going to buy it because they need it, people buy it so they turn it into ectos.

Same thing for crafting. If you're a crafter you'll craft your t5 rare, salvage get ectos, craft the gear you know people want and sell it. What effects the price you can sell it at? Primarily the costs of the raw materials. If people can make the item a lot cheaper by buying the materials and crafting it themselves thats what they're going to do. If they cant craft it themselves you can be sure someone in their guild can. So what does that mean to a crafter? a 10s reduction in ecto price means an item that takes say 50ectos needs to be discounted by a whole 5g if s/he hopes to sell it.

The thing with a player run economy is changes effect different people. The problem with an exploit like this is while it may be advantages for people who want to aquire ectos, it destroys the game for those who depend on the supply of ectos. How would you feel if the activity you enjoy doing whatever that maybe would suddenly turn profitless because someone cheated?

The prices of Rare rise and go with Ectoplasm. They also went down with 5 S since the christmas patch as was espected because of more ppl playing and stuff.

And well you have 80 % chance to get 50 % of the item back. That's true but u won't get the other 50 (the 8 ores) back wich is priced as the price of 1 ectoplasm as I said in last post.

There are a lot of variations in this method like the 20 % chance to lose the upgrade component and needing again another 4 ores + 1 ecto and a snowflake(1,5 S at that given time) the salvage kits that cost allmost 1 s a piece the given back ores. But I just tried it with like 50 salvages. First time I made 5 G but also used my own stacks of Snowflakes/Globs/Ori ores. Then did like another 50 -75 with bought parts and I lost money. Well I 100 Ectos or something for 23,5 G each but could have done the same with rares. And by selling them I made a small loss.

The main question is , is it right to ban people for crafting a new item then salvaging them for globs? Something that is being done ever since release with t5 mats and rares. How can we know there intention isn't to fix the price of globs by upping the supply after raising the demand with ascended?

Edited by unraveled, 03 January 2013 - 08:13 PM.
Didn't need that.

[Gilles VI]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 03:29 PM, said:

Then you don't understand who is monopolist. Those who bought all dyes at 5g are monopolists.

They are investors*

[JONO51]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 03:29 PM, said:

Then you don't understand who is monopolist. Those who bought all dyes at 5g are monopolists.

why do you think there is an abyss dye monopoly?

Abyss

Spoiler

Unidentified

Spoiler

Gold

Spoiler

Adobe

Spoiler

Notice how they've ALL followed pretty much the same pricing chart. Adobe and Gold have had a little erraticness because they can easily be messed with, but they've quickly returned to the same pattern. Its all because they reduced the dye drop rate to lower than what it was before the accidental buff nov1-5.

[duncanmix]

Gilles VI, on 03 January 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

They are investors*

You can call them that way which means you have nothing against this type of monopolizing. Also this is something which is not illegal and I understand that, but I feel anet should deal with it.

JONO51, on 03 January 2013 - 03:45 PM, said:

why do you think there is an abyss dye monopoly?

Abyss

Spoiler

Unidentified

Spoiler

Gold

Spoiler

Adobe

Spoiler

Notice how they've ALL followed pretty much the same pricing chart. Adobe and Gold have had a little erraticness because they can easily be messed with, but they've quickly returned to the same pattern. Its all because they reduced the dye drop rate to lower than what it was before the accidental buff nov1-5.

This is simply not true, because I saw how abyss went from 5g - 15g in too fast period. Drop rates had nothing to do with it.

[JONO51]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 03:47 PM, said:

This is simply not true, because I saw how abyss went from 5g - 15g in too fast period. Drop rates had nothing to do with it.

Your memory is clearly mistaken then.

[duncanmix]

JONO51, on 03 January 2013 - 03:50 PM, said:

Your memory is clearly mistaken then.

Well if you don't believe in my memory believe in your chart. From early september until early november price was stale at around 5g. Something happened that day and suddenly price started to raise.
In 5 days price would go up to 10g which is double the price of what it was for full 2 months. There were many abyss dyes for 5g and price in that range. But then they were all gone. Group of people bought them all. And started raising price. This chart is just showing actually what happened.

[JONO51]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 03:54 PM, said:

Well if you don't believe in my memory believe in your chart. From early september until early november price was stale at around 5g. Something happened that day and suddenly price started to raise.
In 5 days price would go up to 10g which is double the price of what it was for full 2 months. There were many abyss dyes for 5g and price in that range. But then they were all gone. Group of people bought them all. And started raising price. This chart is just showing actually what happened.

Nov 5th "Corrected drop rate for Unidentified Dye." http://wiki.guildwar...ates/2012-11-05

Threads on dye drop being much lower than before a few weeks after the "fix".
http://www.guildwars...ow-way-too-low/
https://forum-en.gui...Dye-drop-rate-1

The charts for all the dyes echo this gradual increase over the course of 3 weeks to their current price. It wasn't person(s) buying out all the abyss, its the result of the update. Unless you think they have done this to every single dye over the course of 3 weeks, because its the same chart for all of them.

[duncanmix]

JONO51, on 03 January 2013 - 04:01 PM, said:

Nov 5th "Corrected drop rate for Unidentified Dye." http://wiki.guildwar...ates/2012-11-05

Threads on dye drop being much lower than before a few weeks after the "fix".
http://www.guildwars...ow-way-too-low/
https://forum-en.gui...Dye-drop-rate-1

The charts for all the dyes echo this gradual increase over the course of 3 weeks to their current price. It wasn't person(s) buying out all the abyss, its the result of the update. Unless you think they have done this to every single dye over the course of 3 weeks, because its the same chart for all of them.

Ok your first link show drop was corrected which would imply back to how it was before. Other 2 links are speculations of few people. You prove nothing same like I don't prove. I wish I can show how in one moment there were many abyss dyes and then in next moment there were almost none. Also there were people on this forum trying to create monopolizing group. They are even open in what they do. I'm too lazy to search for that. You can believe in whatever you want.


Here is link of people openly discussing it:  http://www.guildwars...6013-buy-group/

Edited by duncanmix, 03 January 2013 - 04:13 PM.

[XPhiler]

ReMarkable91, on 03 January 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

The prices of Rare rise and go with Ectoplasm. They also went down with 5 S since the christmas patch as was espected because of more ppl playing and stuff.

And well you have 80 % chance to get 50 % of the item back. That's true but u won't get the other 50 (the 8 ores) back wich is priced as the price of 1 ectoplasm as I said in last post.

There are a lot of variations in this method like the 20 % chance to lose the upgrade component and needing again another 4 ores + 1 ecto and a snowflake(1,5 S at that given time) the salvage kits that cost allmost 1 s a piece the given back ores. But I just tried it with like 50 salvages. First time I made 5 G but also used my own stacks of Snowflakes/Globs/Ori ores. Then did like another 50 -75 with bought parts and I lost money. Well I 100 Ectos or something for 23,5 G each but could have done the same with rares. And by selling them I made a small loss.

The main question is , is it right to ban people for crafting a new item then salvaging them for globs? Something that is being done ever since release with t5 mats and rares. How can we know there intention isn't to fix the price of globs by upping the supply after raising the demand with ascended?

And why ppl keep posting about fcking dyes here that is not the subject of the topic!

Thats because you used a recipe that required Ori, but the post on redit was about a recipe that require mithril that changes things quite a bit. ecto+flake during the exploit cost around 45s, the mithril was about 3.6s
80% of the time you would get back about 47s and loose only about 2.8s

You were unlucky, if the Ori costed as much as ecto+flake depending on your luck it could actually not be an exploit at all since that might have cut profit out. Explain your experiance to support perhaps they'll feel in your case it was vague enough that your experiance wasnt clear enough to realise it was an exploit.

This was about a different recipe though, using that combination it was essentially impossible to make a loss, on the contrary one made about 3x the money invested each time because the cost of the ore itself was negligable compared with cost of what you got back 80% of the time.

[Mastruq]

Swoopeh, on 03 January 2013 - 10:49 AM, said:

To quote that Anet post:



The bold part is important I think to prevent taking this out of context. If they banned everyone who made a few ectos off this then I would agree that that's harsh. However they only banned those who made significant use of the exploit and made a profit thus messing with the economy.

I wouldn't have perma-banned them though, they really need a better penalty system. First strike is a warning for those who think they're doing no harm, second strike to show they mean business and the third strike you're out.

They said a few months ago exploits will be banned and there were at least one major incident since then, I consider that ample warning. It's also likely that the worst offenders use several accounts to mule their trading post goods too, so banning at the first serious offense is something I support very much. At least they feel the sting of buying two new accounts more often, because I actually doubt that many of those worst offenders lose a character they played much. You can bet anyone breaking various other rules like botting jumped on this train too and less bots, cheapers and people that think "hey lets just do it for these 400g, nobody will notice" (i.e. cheaters that think they are not cheating) is always good.

They banned anyone that used the exploit often, maybe more then 10 times or longer then 15 minutes or whatever, anyone doing that knew he was doing wrong and deserves the consequences.

[P4ndora]

I wonder how honest those guys on reddit are. I knew about this exploit before it was patched (I didn't try it out though), I heard it from my guildmates. Some of them made a few ectoplasms this way but stopped doing it pretty soon and we deciced to report it as a bug (not really needed as some stupid prick made a post on OFFICIAL forums, heck I think that guy was the first who got banned xD). After this, I'm glad they did as my friends weren't banned.
I don't know what was the limit, but I guess those who go banned did all this on purpose, so I'd say they deserved it. A normal person would realise that something is off when you can make almost infinity profit out of nowhere. And lol at some people who complaining that they lost money in the long run, first of all mystic kits are more than enough and you have to be the unluckiest person in the world if you don't get enough ectos back. Secondly, a normal person would stop if they realize they are losing money, so I'm very curious, and asking honestly: are you sure you "only made a few ectos" with this exploit?

[Lydeck]

ANet talking about worrying that the economy will be broken while precursors are all 350+ gold and things like charged lodestones are 3+ gold a pop.

[Jason Seven]

Lydeck, on 03 January 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

ANet talking about worrying that the economy will be broken while precursors are all 350+ gold and things like charged lodestones are 3+ gold a pop.

I'll just leave these here: http://www.guildwars...e-been-changed/
http://www.guildwars...s/#entry1948393

None of the people involved in the above mentioned exploit were banned, they were instead praised and shown gratitude!

[JONO51]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

Ok your first link show drop was corrected which would imply back to how it was before. Other 2 links are speculations of few people. You prove nothing same like I don't prove. I wish I can show how in one moment there were many abyss dyes and then in next moment there were almost none. Also there were people on this forum trying to create monopolizing group. They are even open in what they do. I'm too lazy to search for that. You can believe in whatever you want.


Here is link of people openly discussing it:  http://www.guildwars...6013-buy-group/

Considering all dyes showed the same level of price increase (3-4x) over the same time period, I think its clear the drop rate wasn't restored to what it was previously. Bot bans may also have had an effect, but they didnt occur until around a week after the patch was put in, by which point prices were already on their way up above what they were before. And yes, after people read the patch notes they will have bought the cheaper dyes that were a result of the buff, but there was no sudden price jump to 15g or anything. Just an increase to the price they were before, which shows people just bought out the cheaper stock to use or relist at the old price. The "almost none" was actually just the stock that was there beforehand.

[Kable]

If you want gold then buy gems for real money and then convert them to gold. That is a perfectly fine exploit and what I did to make alot of gold and buy whatever I wanted.

There is zero risk with this exploit and you will not get banned for it.

I am rich in the game and have no gold worries. The Black Lion is my friend and I port everywhere and never have issues with bag space with my 20 slot bags and am always respeccing and fiddling around with my traits and gears since I can buy any armor sets. Only thing I can't buy at the moment is the Fractals gear. Working on Fractals but will wait till the patch that fixes fractals so we don't have to drop to lowest level player fractal lvl to run them.

[duncanmix]

JONO51, on 03 January 2013 - 05:06 PM, said:

Considering all dyes showed the same level of price increase (3-4x) over the same time period, I think its clear the drop rate wasn't restored to what it was previously. Bot bans may also have had an effect, but they didnt occur until around a week after the patch was put in, by which point prices were already on their way up above what they were before. And yes, after people read the patch notes they will have bought the cheaper dyes that were a result of the buff, but there was no sudden price jump to 15g or anything. Just an increase to the price they were before, which shows people just bought out the cheaper stock to use or relist at the old price. The "almost none" was actually just the stock that was there beforehand.

Its relative term sudden. 2 months abyss was 5g and in matter of several days it vent to 10 and kept raising. U say just increase to the price they were before, your chart actually say It raised by double and now more then triple. Abyss was never 15g+. Believe what u wanna believe, in drop rates or other people working on monopolizing.

[xycury]

They should be banned.

It doesn't take much to know that paying in on 1 ecto, then salvaging it gets you 1 ecto AND the upgrade that has an ecto inside of it.... total exploit.

What they could do is just do a rollback... that would be the only other way I could see that this as being fair and opposite of a ban.  Roll them back to Dec 14th, the morning of.  Then their punishment is the lost of 2 weeks time.. and all their exploiting goods.  BUT, at least they can play still.


oh and the silly  argument on that one thread where Anet "stated" it wasn't an exploit....I think the understanding of reading it meant that getting something more from something less is an exploit.  He said that doing the market is fine, but getting more from it than what you put in, IS an exploit.  Users should have realized that and stopped.

Now anyone that did >100 is gone... good riddance.

Edited by xycury, 03 January 2013 - 06:29 PM.

[ReMarkable91]

Made a post on reddit with why I not only wan't an unban but wan't to bring the original recipe of the Orichalcum Earing back.

http://www.reddit.co...ake_orichalcum/

xycury, on 03 January 2013 - 06:26 PM, said:

They should be banned.

It doesn't take much to know that paying in on 1 ecto, then salvaging it gets you 1 ecto AND the upgrade that has an ecto inside of it.... total exploit.

What they could do is just do a rollback... that would be the only other way I could see that this as being fair and opposite of a ban.  Roll them back to Dec 14th, the morning of.  Then their punishment is the lost of 2 weeks time.. and all their exploiting goods.  BUT, at least they can play still.


oh and the silly  argument on that one thread where Anet "stated" it wasn't an exploit....I think the understanding of reading it meant that getting something more from something less is an exploit.  He said that doing the market is fine, but getting more from it than what you put in, IS an exploit.  Users should have realized that and stopped.

Now anyone that did >100 is gone... good riddance.

You know you can make 0 ectoplasm into 1 by crafting 80 rares since start right? This is nothing different only u make 1 to 2. And that u need Ori Ore to be wasted in stead of t5 mats. (both are worth the same as 1 ectoplasm pretty fast)

[Veltoss]

If you have to ask if something is an exploit or not, don't do it. It's usually pretty obvious whether something is an exploit or not, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. The people who tried to get away with abusing this recipe were hoping that an exploit wouldn't be punished as an exploit, and that's just stupid. I am glad Arena Net continues to punish people who try to exploit/cheat.

RaoulDukeHST, on 03 January 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

they should focus on the trading post exploiters,who make thousands of gold just because they have thousands of gold.A person can buy 100 $ worth of gold from gold farmers and double that money in an hour,arenanet doesn't do anything about these people who are creating artificial prices,they ban some poor sucker who tried to get 50 ectos to craft some backpiece.

That's not an exploit, that's playing the market and being smart. There is no bug being exploited here.

PS: If you know what market to play to double $100 worth of gold in only an hour, I'm sure those of us who play the TP would love to hear it, because no one can do anything remotely like this right now.

[kaldemeo]

Eon Lilu, on 03 January 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

...Im just glad Anet unlike most other gaming companies take this sort of exploiting seriously and actually act on it swiftly.

Anet makes the rules which for many people = the game code.
Sure they should fix their mistakes. But that have nothing to do with banning people.

[Millimidget]

JONO51, on 03 January 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:

Early on during Wintersday one of the jewellers recipes could be exploited to gain a lot of ectos through salvaging (craft, regain snowflake and potentially several ecto & repeat).

It wasn't an exploit. Honor of the Underwaves was an exploit. The market self-corrected for this, and ecto prices only dropped 20% according to the spyder. For the record, I don't have even a single crafting skill, so no, I wasn't involved in this.

This seems like a total misuse of Anet's time, and they came across as totally aloof and out of touch with most players, at the very least because there's better things they could be focusing on.

I don't know who they expect to stick around and continue buying gems, let alone who will stick around buying gems when most of the remaining playerbase has left.

They've got 101 things to take care of in every facet of this game, and while addressing the recipe was their prerogative, taking it a step further and handing out bans is outright foolish.

Total abuse of power, IMO, and totally unappealing; would not have bought the game if I knew they employed people like Gaile, because people like Gaile infect the entire culture of an organization, and are incapable of making a worthwhile game.

Someone else mentioned on another forum that subscription games don't pull this kind of stuff (as often), and I can't help but agree. All they've got going here is a fairly well developed game world, which they totally misuse. Now that I've seen it, little things like this would be more than enough to turn me off to the game entirely.

xycury, on 03 January 2013 - 06:26 PM, said:

They should be banned.

It doesn't take much to know that paying in on 1 ecto, then salvaging it gets you 1 ecto AND the upgrade that has an ecto inside of it.... total exploit.

But it wasn't free ectos; you needed to burn other mats. It was a method for converting other mats into ectos, and from what I understand the market had already self-corrected by the time Anet patched it.

In a game with so miserable an economy for the average player, I can't imagine what level of harm would have been done by not banning these players, which says to me that the issue from Anet's standpoint is that some precious metric was violated, or that Gaile simply takes pleasure in banning people; neither are attractive, as one is totally misguided and the other is outright an abuse of power.

turbo234, on 03 January 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

Seriously? If it breaks the game don't do it. It's really not that hard of a concept to grasp people.

It didn't break the game. Nothing of the sort. It's not at all like the various dungeon exploits people used to generate seed money for cornering the precursor market way back in September. All this did was increase the value of some T5 mats, and decrease the value of ectos, both of which are a win for 99.999% of players.

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

And on top of that this raise of price somehow hurt people who bought it all for 5g and now reselling for those high prices?

That raises another point; where does it end. By this logic, people who mass buy dyes are exploiting as well. Where is their ban?

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 03:47 PM, said:

This is simply not true, because I saw how abyss went from 5g - 15g in too fast period. Drop rates had nothing to do with it.

Drop rates had everything to do with it; Anet didn't even need to touch drop rates, and the price of Abyss was going to go up. That happens when 50%+ of your playerbase packs up and leaves within the first two months.

Edited by Millimidget, 03 January 2013 - 07:45 PM.

[Gilles VI]

duncanmix, on 03 January 2013 - 03:47 PM, said:

You can call them that way which means you have nothing against this type of monopolizing. Also this is something which is not illegal and I understand that, but I feel anet should deal with it.

Monopoly: a situation in which one company or person or a government has no competition in the sale of a particular product or service and is able to control its supply and price:  (http://dictionary.ca...nglish/monopoly)

As far as I know people don't have the unique right of getting Abyss drops..

Millimidget, on 03 January 2013 - 07:37 PM, said:

In a game with so miserable an economy for the average player, I can't imagine what level of harm would have been done by not banning these players, which says to me that the issue from Anet's standpoint is that some precious metric was violated, or that Gaile simply takes pleasure in banning people; neither are attractive, as one is totally misguided and the other is outright an abuse of power.

In what way is the economy miserable for the average player?
Every casual player I know have no problem getting their max armor, paying WP, repairs,...
Ofcourse they don't earn enough to get a t3 yet, or get their legendary, but that's the point, those aren't meant for casual players..

And you would not be talking about Gaile like that if you knew her..
She is the friendliest dev I've ever met, she was active on the GW1W, she was often to be found online in GW1 in the capital city,...
God she was loved by almost every player that ever talked to her because of her friendly and straight conversations with us, the normal players.

[Millimidget]

Gilles VI, on 03 January 2013 - 07:45 PM, said:

And you would not be talking about Gaile like that if you knew her..
She is the friendliest dev I've ever met, she was active on the GW1W, she was often to be found online in GW1 in the capital city,...

If you say so.

"That's what has to happen to make it right for all of us."

Are you kidding me? Make it right for your bottom line by continuing to nickle and dime players into using your cash shop is more like it. They didn't even make the cash shop an attractive option by filling it with attractive items. And they're clearly more interested in chasing down a few whales than in fostering a larger playerbase which purchases fewer gems per capita.

The whole thing stinks; she could have been Mother Teressa in GW1, but this isn't GW1, and the attitude I saw displayed in her statement is beyond sad.

Gilles VI, on 03 January 2013 - 07:45 PM, said:

In what way is the economy miserable for the average player?
Every casual player I know have no problem getting their max armor, paying WP, repairs,...

WP and repair costs are a constant complaint from many players, and level 80 exotics are no longer so cheap that you can just hit 80 and buy them, so yeah, there's starting to be a growing problem with getting max armor (incidentally, it was never really grind free, so don't act like it was).

Meanwhile, what were the consequences of this? Higher prices for two T5 mats? I don't know about you, but the most common mat I'm collecting is mithril, so increased mithril prices are a win for me. Lower ecto prices? I've already watched my stack of 250 ectos lose 20% of the value I bought it at even before Wintersday released, but that doesn't bother me much because I need yet more, so reduced ecto prices are also a win for me.

On the other hand, it's still not worthwhile for me to go out and farm anything, not even for 20-30m. Better off just running a dungeon and buying everything off the TP. Totally underwhelming experience, but 30+ hours just to farm one stack of mats is insane.

Oh, and I don't see Gaile talking about how they're increasing precursor drop rate and drop locations, so whatever the hell she's in charge with, she certainly didn't make things right for players.

Edited by unraveled, 03 January 2013 - 08:16 PM.
Didn't need that.

[Gilles VI]

Millimidget, on 03 January 2013 - 07:55 PM, said:

If you say so.

"That's what has to happen to make it right for all of us."

Are you kidding me? Make it right for your bottom line by continuing to nickle and dime players into using your cash shop is more like it. They didn't even make the cash shop an attractive option by filling it with attractive items. And they're clearly more interested in chasing down a few whales than in fostering a larger playerbase which purchases fewer gems per capita.

The whole thing stinks; she could have been Mother Teressa in GW1, but this isn't GW1, and the attitude I saw displayed in her statement is beyond sad.

There are 2 sides to every argument, I saw nothing bad in her statement, i see absolutely no harm in the cash-shop and I see no harm in banning people that used exploits that had a major impact on the economy.
And she's not the only person that decides over bans, hell I don't even know if she actually chooses to ban people or not.

Edited by unraveled, 03 January 2013 - 08:17 PM.
Amended quote.

[Millimidget]

Gilles VI, on 03 January 2013 - 08:03 PM, said:

There are 2 sides to every argument, I saw nothing bad in her statement, i see absolutely no harm in the cash-shop and I see no harm in banning people that used exploits that had a major impact on the economy.

I've seen no evidence that this had a major impact on the economy.

All I've heard is that vague statement about "egregious abuse," and yet the worst offender I've heard of made 300g, which is hardly different from someone who quit in September logging on now and selling a precursor they had in their inventory all this time.

There are bigger issues facing this game. Pulling a Congress and doing something purely for the sake of being able to point out that you've done something will not win brownie points with most players. A few, obviously, but one has to wonder what kind of people those few really are when they're gleeful about players getting banned for what's the least obvious "exploit" I can recall in any MMO.

PS: She wouldn't be the first "super awesome" dev I've seen degenerate into complete POS status after jumping titles. One of the all time greatest developer moves I've seen came from a community rep in DAoC, and yet you wouldn't know she had done something so awesome based on her attitude in WAR. People change; power corrupts; fanboy praises can go to a developer's head.

Edited by Millimidget, 03 January 2013 - 08:12 PM.

[d_fens]

I wonder when ANet will actually take responsibility for all their stupid mistakes during GW2 development. It doesn't matter if OP created 1 ecto, 10 ectos or gazilion of ectos. The only one guilty of this entire situation is developer/software architect/designer who allowed this to happen. It's a design failure of epic proportions. Normally, a guy (or girl) who pulls such crap is out of the development team instantly. Until those people start actually thinking during work, our industry (software development) will produce mostly crap. ANet calling this entire situation 'exploiting' is just covering their incompetence. Just my 2 cents.

PS. Normal course of action after such major crap on developer's side, is database rollback for affected players. This can be done if dev team/support team is not lazy and database is designed with some thought. Banhammer in this case is completely unnecessary.

Edited by d_fens, 03 January 2013 - 08:18 PM.

[Just Horus]

It warms my heart to see all these people banned. Thank you for the late Christmas gift ANet.