237 replies to this topic

[Perm Shadow Form]

How much money do I need to start manipulating the trading post? Is there any tutorial?  I have around 200g and I have no desire to save them for legendary and i love screwing others.

[leongrado]

Wickity, on 20 January 2013 - 05:40 PM, said:

I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that any serious fan of the game will be more likely to defend any and all of its features rather then admitting to something as obvious as the truth of gw's economy structure. The fact of the matter remains that "end game", or the "end game" that players bestowed upon themselves has become playing the trading post and any other content that can bring high influence on the already mentioned. I do not deem myself an expert, but I have played enough mmo's to realise that the grin in this specific game is completly and utterly unrewarding. So what to do in a game where any personal esthetic achievements are tied to large summs of gold? Well, do whatever needed to aquire that ammount. THis is where the sad part kicks in because it has been proven that the only viable direction of earning gold is either spamming the same old(rather boring and uneventful)dungeons, or playing the trading post which is mostly influenced by players who have turned large profits in the early stages of the game wether by exploiting/gambling or investing a lot of irl money.

Every mmo player needs something to push them forward and distinguish them from another one. Wether it's the strength of gear, the looks of it, or other relevant achievements. It's what drives the mmo community in general, because competition, even between friends and per se raiders/dungeon groups, is the main(not only)motivating factor.

So what do you do when you realise that you've done countless and countless dungeon runs without any large step forward in your finances, and the dungeons themselves are becoming a drag. What do you do when you up front knew that playing the trading post is your least favourite aspect of the game, and you would rather be rewarded for your personal efforts rather then depend on others? What do you do when after playing 500 hours the way "you wanted to", you see a player who played 200 hours, but is bragging around with his legendary that he earned through his credit card.

You get tired...and you have every right to do so. Both me and my girlfriend stopped playing Gw2 due to this perticular reason, we, who have always been more then patient when it comes to earning anything.

Nobody likes to hear it, fans will up frot deny it, but the fact remains. Gw2's "endgame" is the Black Lion Trading Company. Period.


P.S. In every other aspect, a beautiful game, but as it stand now, i doubt that will be enough.

Yes! I agree with everything from the people who patrol these forums defending the game to why you stopped playing the game.

[Krazzar]

Wickity, on 20 January 2013 - 05:40 PM, said:

Spoiler

I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that any serious fan of the game will be more likely to defend any and all of its features rather then admitting to something as obvious as the truth of gw's economy structure. The fact of the matter remains that "end game", or the "end game" that players bestowed upon themselves has become playing the trading post and any other content that can bring high influence on the already mentioned. I do not deem myself an expert, but I have played enough mmo's to realise that the grin in this specific game is completly and utterly unrewarding. So what to do in a game where any personal esthetic achievements are tied to large summs of gold? Well, do whatever needed to aquire that ammount. THis is where the sad part kicks in because it has been proven that the only viable direction of earning gold is either spamming the same old(rather boring and uneventful)dungeons, or playing the trading post which is mostly influenced by players who have turned large profits in the early stages of the game wether by exploiting/gambling or investing a lot of irl money.

Every mmo player needs something to push them forward and distinguish them from another one. Wether it's the strength of gear, the looks of it, or other relevant achievements. It's what drives the mmo community in general, because competition, even between friends and per se raiders/dungeon groups, is the main(not only)motivating factor.

So what do you do when you realise that you've done countless and countless dungeon runs without any large step forward in your finances, and the dungeons themselves are becoming a drag. What do you do when you up front knew that playing the trading post is your least favourite aspect of the game, and you would rather be rewarded for your personal efforts rather then depend on others? What do you do when after playing 500 hours the way "you wanted to", you see a player who played 200 hours, but is bragging around with his legendary that he earned through his credit card.

You get tired...and you have every right to do so. Both me and my girlfriend stopped playing Gw2 due to this perticular reason, we, who have always been more then patient when it comes to earning anything.

Nobody likes to hear it, fans will up frot deny it, but the fact remains. Gw2's "endgame" is the Black Lion Trading Company. Period.


P.S. In every other aspect, a beautiful game, but as it stand now, i doubt that will be enough.

Sorry, but some of us actually care about the experience of the game more than the balance of a bank account that is not real. If your motivation is only in-game wealth you're going to have a tough time with GW2 because GW1 was a complete joke in terms of economy.  The necessities are not expensive in the least, exotic gear and dungeon gear is not excessive to get, the only difficult things to get are legendary weapons and legendary precursors, which we all knew would be difficult to get. That is a successful working economy, the things you need are cheap (and actually getting cheaper all the time) and the things you can have way there at the top take time to get.

Not every player puts wealth at the top of their priorities list. If you do you're confined to whatever actions are efficient by your own volition. What exactly is so expensive and difficult to get and so necessary that is causes people to quit the game is never established.  Am I missing something? Are there more than 25 zones, 8 dungeons, and fractals that require some kind of super-expensive uber-gear above exotics (or ascended)? Is 80 not actually the max level?

I would say that person has every right to brag about his legendary weapon that he bought with his credit card and we should all thank him because he has single-handedly paid for half the development time of the next expansion pack. It costs about $18,000 to trade gems for enough gold to buy a legendary.  I, on the other hand, will get no such thanks for working the system the other way. I bought four bank tabs and three character slots with gems by trading in-game gold, which people seem to conveniently forget. Personally, I don't care about what other people have in their inventories, that has no bearing on the ability I have to enjoy my time doing the things I want to do. If you want to get wrapped up in the epeen game you have to actually play the game, you can't get all the spoils without playing the game. Again, that's your choice, albeit a childish one.

If you're tired of the game stop playing, but you can't blame the game for your choices. If you decide getting a legendary weapon is the only activity that is worthwhile that's up to you, there's tons of game between the start and that point. All this does confirm the sneaking suspicion that most only liked GW1 because it was so easy to manipulate and exploit to gain tons of wealth extremely quickly.

[Arquenya]

Personally I'm very happy they put an Auction House in the game as I absolutely hated the "screaming in LA or Kaining" way of "economy".
Although it would be nice if you could 1) also select armor type and 2) have a preview and 3) it would also be nice if I didn't have to restart the client all the time because the TP often seems to stop working after playing for a while.

For the rest there isn't anything I'd want in the game where money can help. Because I dislike the current legendaries there isn't so much that I can do with my money and it's steadily piling up in my stash. But that may change once they introduce pretty and sleek legendary or ascended items.

I dislike the fine transmutation stones for gems. But thus far, that's just a minor annoyance. Which may change if all my characters have to get ascended weapons or gear and I still want to keep the same look, then it may become a major annoyance.
After all, cosmetics isn't a minor issue. For many people it's one of the major reasons why they play the game.

For the rest, even if it doesn't really interest me that much:

• GW2 suffers a steady inflation as there's a lot of gold added to the game every day without any significant gold sinks;
  
• Games like EVE with local economies of course added myriads of ways to participate in the economy (transporter service, playing local economies, moving stuff to where prices are higher). In GW2's way that's all impossible, removing a lot of possible gameplay options;
  
• Crafting is really implemented in a mediocre way. Extremely easy to max out to 400, your crafted stuff towards 400 is mostly vendor trash, no ways to be working towards increasing efficiency, no player done repairs, no rare recipes, not really any way to be a fulltime crafter or manufacturer. Hardly any consumables (except food) to keep a flow of goods streaming to the market.
  
• RL Cash for gems for gold. I found it silly in EVE (plex) and I feel the same about gems in GW2.

Edited by Arquenya, 21 January 2013 - 11:16 AM.

[Gilles VI]

Perm Shadow Form, on 21 January 2013 - 12:41 AM, said:

How much money do I need to start manipulating the trading post? Is there any tutorial?  I have around 200g and I have no desire to save them for legendary and i love screwing others.

I started with 30g or so.
Use crafting, buy materials, craft them, sell them again, easy risk/free profit.

I find it funny people scream about how the TP is the only way to make money, I guess they don't realise the money you make has to be earned by other people first.
How do those people got their gold?

And the more people that start to play the TP, the more interesting it becomes to just normally play.

Even more ridiculous are the people saying this economy is broken, the only game I think of where it was easier to get max gear was GW1 (which wasn't a true MMO), other than GW1, GW2 is the easiest game ever to get max stat gear.
And the people complaining about nice skins, those are completely optional, so you should also be prepared to work for it..

[JHCinSC]

The economy stinks. They used the D3 economic model where the game drives you to the cash shop to succeed. There is no reason to play the game as the paltry rewards are counter acted by the gold sinks. I see people talk about making 15 gold per week and they are either lying or playing the game 24/7.   I haven't seen my number of gold change in the past week of play.  I actually considered buying another GW2 acct so I could buy online gold w/o endangering my main acct and that is when I realized how broken the game is that I even thought of doing such a thing.   For a while I thought karma was going to make up for not being able to make gold, but then I see that the designers in their infinite wisdom make exotic karma armor with stats that nobody would want.  My Ranger has a set of power/toughness/vitality karma armor and a set of precision/vitality/condition damage.  Neither is really complements her build.  I crafted her a set of MF exotics using most of my money just to find out that MF is a joke and doesn't actually help you.  I was mostly signing on to do my daily achievement, but now that I realize that I can't make money playing the game and the jugs of karma aren't really that useful I am starting to wonder why I even sign in at all.  D3 was trying to fix their game when I left to start playing GW2.  Maybe they have fixed it to where their game is fun and rewarding again.  Unfortunately GW2 is not fun or rewarding and that is a shame as it has potential to be a great game.

[Lordkrall]

If you don't see your money move at all it might be the fact that you are too bad at the game and constantly die and have to repair/wp. If you actually survive you can easily make several gold each day.

[Senatic]

JHCinSC, on 21 January 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

The economy stinks. They used the D3 economic model where the game drives you to the cash shop to succeed.

Such BS. 1000+ hours played and I used the cash shop once in august to get some more bank space. Even then I didn't feel pushed towards the cash shop. Hell most of the time I don't even realize it's there.

Edited by Senatic, 21 January 2013 - 12:10 PM.

[Arquenya]

Senatic, on 21 January 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

Such BS. 1000+ hours played and I used the cash shop once in august to get some more bank space. Even then I didn't feel pushed towards the cash shop. Hell most of the time I don't even realize it's there.

You're either extremely fortunate to get so many fine T-stones from other sources, you don't care about stats/looks and/or you only have one character.

JHCinSC, on 21 January 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

I see people talk about making 15 gold per week and they are either lying or playing the game 24/7. I haven't seen my number of gold change in the past week of play.

A dungeon gives about 1 gold a run, give or take. Perhaps one lodestone drop, worth 3 gold. You can buy armours for the tokens and salvage them, sell the ecto's and other stuff. 15 gold a week isn't that out of reach, really.

Edited by Arquenya, 21 January 2013 - 01:05 PM.

[Bloodtau]

Arquenya, on 21 January 2013 - 12:41 PM, said:

You're either extremely fortunate to get so many fine T-stones from other sources, you don't care about stats/looks and/or you only have one character.

I have spare T stones (the lv 80 ones) I got from monthlies a couple of times.

[Lordkrall]

Arquenya, on 21 January 2013 - 12:41 PM, said:

You're either extremely fortunate to get so many fine T-stones from other soruces, you don't care about stats/looks or you only have one character.

And why would anyone need any Fine T-stones?
It is however quite easily to get more than enough Fine T-stones to last a lifetime, unless of course you go around and use them every single time you get a new item.

[raspberry jam]

Lordkrall, on 21 January 2013 - 12:43 PM, said:

And why would anyone need any Fine T-stones?

I guess people need them to put the armor skin that they want onto the stats chunk that they want?

[Lordkrall]

raspberry jam, on 21 January 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

I guess people need them to put the armor skin that they want onto the stats chunk that they want?

And why would you NEED that?
Want != Need.

[Coolit]

I think it's probably the worst economy if you want to make gold that’s for sure. It's deliberate though so that people will just buy gems and convert to gold which is great for Anet but absolutely terrible for the player.

[Arquenya]

Lordkrall, on 21 January 2013 - 12:43 PM, said:

And why would anyone need any Fine T-stones?
It is however quite easily to get more than enough Fine T-stones to last a lifetime, unless of course you go around and use them every single time you get a new item.

Quite easy you say, how?

With 5 lvl80s that want 2 different armour sets and all weapon setups you need quite some of them. Because most dungeon sets don't come in prefered flavours, t-stones are basically a must for everyone that gives about looks. And that's about 20 per character.

Lordkrall, on 21 January 2013 - 01:21 PM, said:

And why would you NEED that?
Want != Need.

In a cosmetics based game, why walk around looking like a spiked demon or conan the barbarian if you really dislike that?
I wouldn't even play the game if it wasn't for the great cosmetics.

Edited by Arquenya, 21 January 2013 - 01:26 PM.

[raspberry jam]

Lordkrall, on 21 January 2013 - 01:21 PM, said:

And why would you NEED that?
Want != Need.

It's a game, you don't need anything. For example, you don't need to be able to kill enemies. So you don't need weapons. You don't need to be able to survive them, either, so you don't need armor. Those are things you want.

The post you quoted was talking about caring about the looks of your character. This is something as important as being able to finish a mission for some people.

[Lordkrall]

Arquenya, on 21 January 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

Quite easy you say, how?

With 5 lvl80s that want 2 different armour sets and all weapon setups you need quite some of them. Because most dungeon sets don't come in prefered flavours, t-stones are basically a must for everyone that gives about looks. And that's about 20 per character.

Play the game.
Do dailies. Open BLC when you get keys and so on.

[Arquenya]

Lordkrall, on 21 January 2013 - 01:25 PM, said:

Play the game.
Do dailies. Open BLC when you get keys and so on.

I hardly ever got fine t-stones from that while I've been doing dailies from day 1 and used like 70 keys I found. I think I got 5 or 6 sets of 5 (one from completing Cursed Shore), which is not nearly enough for so many characters and sets.

Not sure how many you got?

[Strawberry Nubcake]

JHCinSC, on 21 January 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

*snip*

The only people that might feel forced to convert gems to gold or buy from Chinese farmers are the ones that are extremely lazy, insist on having everything instantly and/or suck at the game.  They would probably be better off uninstalling.  Feeling forced because of personal issues isn't the same as actually being forced.

Unless you were doing it for the looks, I don't understand why you blew karma on gear with those stats.  A few AC runs and you would have had the P/V/T gear for free, a decent chunk of coin in your bank, and karma left to use on other stuff.  It's an easy dungeon and it's pretty difficult to lose money while running it.  I also don't understand why you thought crafting a third set of gear that didn't compliment your ranger's build would be better than crafting something that might actually help.  To make matters worse, you went for exotic!  You get the same amount of MF from masterwork and rare gear for a fraction of the cost!

15g per week seems unrealistic?  I made about 15g while running dungeons yesterday and that's not counting the ectos I salvaged from rares.  Believe it or not, I didn't even spend all day playing.  I don't use magic find gear and tend to avoid speed clear groups because skipping bosses and glitching everything isn't my cup of tea.  That's right... I could have made more!  It doesn't seem like it would be impossible for someone with a life to make 15g in a week if they actually play the game instead of stand in LA or hang out on forums all day bitching and moaning about everything being impossible.

Aside from dalies, what do you actually do in game?  You can't make money if you're not willing to put in any effort.

(Have fun revisiting Diablo 3!  I hear it's still a disaster.)

Edit:  I am the typo queen!  

Edited by Strawberry Nubcake, 21 January 2013 - 05:54 PM.

[Arquenya]

Strawberry Nubcake, on 21 January 2013 - 01:43 PM, said:

The only people that might feel forced to convert gems to gold or buy from Chinese farmers are the ones that are extremely lazy, insist on having everything instantly and/or suck at the game.  They would probably be better off uninstalling.  Feeling forced because of personal issues isn't the same as actually being forced.

The thing is that if people for whatever reason (often not enough time) can't keep up with their friends or guildies and they feel "peer pressure", ANet (and gold sellers) offers them an easy way out by converting RL Cash to gold.

And apparently people make use of that. A LOT OF people make use of that. In fact I dare to say that a big part of GW2s business plan revolves around it. So people can keep playing and pay money while, indeed, they would probably be better off uninstalling. They're the fat milk cows that aren't catered by sub fee games that don't offer ways to - legally - buy yourself good stuff.

Edited by Arquenya, 21 January 2013 - 02:15 PM.

[sevalaricgirl]

Strawberry Nubcake, on 21 January 2013 - 01:43 PM, said:

15g per week seems unrealistic?  I made about 15k while running dungeons yesterday and that's not counting the ectos I salvaged from rares.  Believe it or not, I didn't even spend all day playing.  I don't use magic find gear and tend to avoid speed clear groups because skipping bosses and glitching everything isn't my cup of tea.  That's right... I could have made more!  It doesn't seem like it would be impossible for someone with a life to make 15g in a week if they actually play the game instead of stand in LA or hang out on forums all day bitching and moaning about everything being impossible.

I call bull on this one.  I run dungeons all the time, have magic find too, and I play every single day and I don't have 15K.  I definitely call bull on that comment.  Enjoy D3.  Seems like you'll fit in there.  And if you mean 15g, then I still call bull.  Ran fractals last night, came out with a little over a gold.

Edited by sevalaricgirl, 21 January 2013 - 03:38 PM.

[ObscureThreat]

Gilles VI, on 21 January 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

And the people complaining about nice skins, those are completely optional, so you should also be prepared to work for it..

Just to debate this point here, but skins in this game are not really optional. They are the endgame. I mean once you get rare level gear you can actually do any dungeon you want except for high level FOTM, so max stats are not a necessity. The carrot in this game is the skins, so it's not optional.

Edited by ObscureThreat, 21 January 2013 - 04:05 PM.

[Moon Electric]

ObscureThreat, on 21 January 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

Just to debate this point here, but skins in this game are not really optional. They are the endgame. I mean once you get rare level gear you can actually do any dungeon you want except for high level FOTM, so max stats are not a necessity. The carrot in this game is the skins, so it's not optional.

Cosmetic rewards don't bar you from any of the game's content in any way, shape or form unless you roleplay or something.

Just to clarify, by stating that cosmetic rewards are not optional you are inferring they are required in some way.

Edited by Moon Electric, 21 January 2013 - 04:22 PM.

[Gasu]

This is nothing compared to Shaiya's economy... It has been f'd up for many years now and nothing is being done about it.

[Gilles VI]

ObscureThreat, on 21 January 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

Just to debate this point here, but skins in this game are not really optional. They are the endgame. I mean once you get rare level gear you can actually do any dungeon you want except for high level FOTM, so max stats are not a necessity. The carrot in this game is the skins, so it's not optional.

Cool so tell me what content requires you to have certain skins?
Skins are optional, everyone can play the game, enjoy everything there is to enjoy and then pause untill a new update hits.
Skins and thus "the endgame" are completely optional.

[Baldur The Bold]

sevalaricgirl, on 21 January 2013 - 03:37 PM, said:

I call bull on this one.  I run dungeons all the time, have magic find too, and I play every single day and I don't have 15K.  I definitely call bull on that comment.  Enjoy D3.  Seems like you'll fit in there.  And if you mean 15g, then I still call bull.  Ran fractals last night, came out with a little over a gold.

Usually AC will give you 2-3G+ per run(3 paths) plus rares if your lucky. The good thing though is you get tokens which can be salvaged for ecto or tossed into the mystic toilet for something else. AC is really easy, just kill kholer get a troll if your lucky and the gold will start coming. I don't use MF gear but I do use omnom bars. AC EX and COF are good money makers(for now..) I get the feeling they will get nerfed somehow.

Edited by Baldur The Bold, 21 January 2013 - 04:30 PM.

[Arewn]

ObscureThreat, on 21 January 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

Just to debate this point here, but skins in this game are not really optional. They are the endgame. I mean once you get rare level gear you can actually do any dungeon you want except for high level FOTM, so max stats are not a necessity. The carrot in this game is the skins, so it's not optional.

"The carrot" in games is the motivating factor that pushes or incentives you playing beyond your innate desire to play the content just for fun. "The carrot" in GW2 is not required for anything. The problem with "the carrot" in many other more traditional MMORPGs is that it's built into the system at a level where you need "the carrot" just to play the regular content, instead of playing it because of your innate desire to play and enjoy it.
"The carrot" in GW2 is in fact optional, it's not required to do anything and is only there to incentives further play for those who want to dump additional hours into the game while feeling like they're getting something done.

[EphraimGlass]

I must be the most casual of casual GW2 players because I don't really understand what this fuss is about.  Across eight characters, I have two that are level 80.  Of those two, each of them has just one exotic piece of equipment (Mad King's Slipper's on one and a crafted helm on the other.)  The rest of their gear is rare.  I don't consider it a failing of the game's economy that I haven't just been handed the means to acquire exotic, ascended, or legendary equipment.  Nor do I consider it a failing that people who chose to min-max the trading post have more wealth than I have.  People say that the "grind" is a joke and you can't possibly acquire the gear you "need" just by playing.  Maybe one could consider me an example of that.

On the other face of that coin, however, I claim that rare gear is all that I "need."  Eventually, one or more of my characters will be outfitted in the best gear.  They've said that they won't release another tier of gear in 2013.  As far as I'm concerned, that means I have another 6 months before having ascended gear is even remotely important.  I was worried, when they first announced ascended tier, that I was going to get left behind, but they've reassured me that it'll be at least a year before I MUST up my gear again.  If I were worrying about keeping up with everybody else, then maybe I'd be concerned.  All I'm worried about is keeping up with the game, though.  Why do people feel that they need to have this or that gear NOW, though?

I play games to amuse myself and to make myself happier.  I choose to play them in ways that facilitate those goals.  There is a way to play GW2 that doesn't cause me to stress out over my gear, over the rate at which I make money, etc.  I choose to play that way.  Seems to me that everybody choosing to play in a way that facilitates anxiety rather than amusement is deliberately undermining their own happiness.

[adra12]

I laugh at all the people who say this economy is ridiculous or in any way makes casuals worse off. The economy in this game is your average real economy. Smart economists can make themselves very rich yes, but it also allows the poor and uninformed buyer to get a fair price that they know isn't a scam. In most MMOs a lot of people get very rich by scamming uninformed players by low ball buys and face to face trade scams. Do the rich get richer in this type of economy absolutely, but in the average MMO  the scammers and dishonest get richer. I know because I have made tons of money in previous MMOs by buying way below market value from the uninformed and selling high, something you can't do in GW2.

Edited by adra12, 21 January 2013 - 05:30 PM.

[Ingway]

I still have to wonder why people bother to make a item, like for example a 20 slots bag and then sell the freaking thing for 11 gold to get a income of 9,50 gold from it... makes me feel like they're trying to keep the lowest price point at a place where you can't really profit from it much, just to mess with people. That, or they're just stupid.

Edited by Ingway, 21 January 2013 - 05:29 PM.