Game Update Notes: January 19, 2021 - Drop Rate Changes Devaluing Goods

I am new to the game and appreciate balancing and updates to bring more items to a wider part of the community. However, it is frustrating to have a change go into effect that devalues items without any way of compensating those with the "old drop rate item". I had some Maguuma lilies that lost over 50% of their value (might go back up over time, could go down more) and I can't even begin to imagine the people that have the Khan infusion that have it posted at 10k (so 500g posting fee they are never getting back) or bought it before the change having buyer's remorse. Not really sure if the fix is possible (compensating with gold or proportionally more items to match the drop rate change) but addressing it in some way would be nice.

I was rather surprised by this sudden change, too. While losing out from the changes sucks (especially if your loss comes within a week of today’s update :/), that’s just the nature of games that get updates. You can’t expect things to always stay the same. There’s always risk things will change in value.

@"Machomang.1852" said:I am new to the game and appreciate balancing and updates to bring more items to a wider part of the community. However, it is frustrating to have a change go into effect that devalues items without any way of compensating those with the "old drop rate item". I had some Maguuma lilies that lost over 50% of their value (might go back up over time, could go down more) and I can't even begin to imagine the people that have the Khan infusion that have it posted at 10k (so 500g posting fee they are never getting back) or bought it before the change having buyer's remorse. Not really sure if the fix is possible (compensating with gold or proportionally more items to match the drop rate change) but addressing it in some way would be nice.

The answer here is that the 'value' of those items was that you own them. If you wanted the value of those items in gold ... you should have sold them.

I think that with the impending expansion, and Steam release sometime soon-ish, Anet is anticipating a large influx of new (or newer?) players and they are manipulating the economy to be more favorable for the new players.

And they probably didn't like that some items ended up getting priced above the trade cap.

It can definitely be frustrating (flax farming on alts was one of my ways to passively make gold, and that took a hit) but in the end this is likely for the best. It makes a lot of stats/items more accessible and increasing infusion drop rates is something people have been asking for for years.

One of the risks you take when playing an MMO is knowing that the economy can change without warning. Runes/sigils, exotic gear, silk and hardened leather, mystic coins, mystic clovers, and far more have had drastic increases and decreases in value over the years and birthday dye kits have had a huge impact on the exclusive dye market. Such changes are great when you benefit from it and suck when you don't (or lose theoretical gold), but it makes things accessible to newer players as they no longer cost as much and they don't need to grind as much to get items that were formally BoA.

The market would have dropped for a lot of today's items at an announcement before the patch anyway (historically people sell off items when they're told ahead of time they'll lose value, and people also start buying up things when they expect the value to increase (though that's not always what happens—just ask the cabbage guy)) so unless absolutely nothing changed, what happened today would have happened regardless.

@kharmin.7683 said:I think that with the impending expansion, and Steam release sometime soon-ish, Anet is anticipating a large influx of new (or newer?) players and they are manipulating the economy to be more favorable for the new players.

Steam release is on ice so I would not expect is soon-ish if I were you

These changes seem like they'll be for the best. I always thought the different methods of acquisition for different stats was weird anyway. And the infusions! Nothing should ever be so rare that its value exceeds the trading post's ability to support it.

This is a common flawed argument that comes up in games and in real life (like when something goes on sale or gets a price drop right after you bought it) but it boils down to "if I suffered, so must everyone else" ... when in the end, if making a change leads to an improvement then that's just bad luck if you saw it as an investment. You're not entitled to having an item stay the same value forever.

I am 100% for the increased in drop rates. Hope this will cause the prices of those super rare infusions to drop way below the10k and also it will stop players for using outside source to do more than 10k transactions. Hopefully everyone will have a better chance of getting them and not strictly for the whales only.

The very rare infusion get bought up by players who control the market on them, much like the diamond market, they have piles of rocks but only sell them at high prices to keep prices up. I used to farm maguma lillys, I sold 5-6 a day at 11-12g ea for long while, you get used to things being devalued, mounts devalued jumping puzzles.the good thing about the lillys, is they are used in crafting, and you need a ton of them for decorating guild halls.

Uhh no. They'd have to compensate players for every change to the game.

Sometimes you win some, and sometimes you lose some. Just deal with it.

As a noob, I've got a lot more to think about than the devaluing of anything affected by this change :bleep_bloop:

@Astralporing.1957 said:And they probably didn't like that some items ended up getting priced above the trade cap.

...and it took them how many years to realise they don't like it? Not sure how you can immediately create your own conclusions when for now nothing changed and we don't know the actual drop rate.

@"Machomang.1852" said:I am new to the game and appreciate balancing and updates to bring more items to a wider part of the community. However, it is frustrating to have a change go into effect that devalues items without any way of compensating those with the "old drop rate item". I had some Maguuma lilies that lost over 50% of their value (might go back up over time, could go down more) and I can't even begin to imagine the people that have the Khan infusion that have it posted at 10k (so 500g posting fee they are never getting back) or bought it before the change having buyer's remorse. Not really sure if the fix is possible (compensating with gold or proportionally more items to match the drop rate change) but addressing it in some way would be nice.

If you wanted to use them anyways, it shouldn't make much of a difference to you (other than you suddenly would like to sell them and re-buy for a quick profit, which isn't really anything you can complain about now). If you wanted to sell them then I'm not sure why you didn't already do that. And if you wanted to play the market a bit, then... yeah, that's the risk.

I actually think this "devaluing" has not gone far enough.

They still haven't increased the supply of invisible shoe boxes.

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:And they probably didn't like that some items ended up getting priced above the trade cap.

We don't know that it's because of the TP price though. Anet have access to a lot more data than we do and could use other metrics to make their decisions. Maybe they have a guideline for the minimum number of unbound ones that should be in circulation at any given time and saw that dropping because they were being used faster than new ones could enter the market, so they increased the drop rate to compensate. Maybe they saw a decrease in the number of players doing those events and wanted to maintain their populations (although then I'd wonder why those events and not others). Maybe it' like that old stereotype about MMO development: the bosses wife or kid has decided they want these infusions and started complaining they're too hard to get.

But I agree that in any game which gets ongoing development you can't rely on specific items to be your source of income or the investment you hold onto because they'll always increase in price because there's always a chance that something will change that. Precursor weapons used to be the safe 'high end' investment - something that would always hold it's value and likely get more expensive, then HoT was announced, with the news that they'd be craftable and the price crashed and has never recovered, to the point where some are actually cheaper to buy from the TP than to craft (because they do still drop from other places sometimes).

Changes probably were overdue. Since a lot of people complained about the TP price limit. and TP is the only supported way to buy/sell. As others explained: That is how things work in an MMORPG. You get changes sometimes. And for buyer's remorse: It just happens. Even without drop rate changes the prices fluctuate. Though on a much smaller scale then. Bought the advanced leather rack from TP which was at 317 gold for a lot of days. Suddenly after I bought it a lot of people magically decided to sell it cheaper (not only 1 that undercut the 317 but a few).

You can have this with gem store sales as well. (Buying something that suddenly goes on sale then.)

As for selling: Instead of being angry that you can get less by selling that stuff ... be happy that it is cheaper - should you need to buy more at some time in the future. If you haven't sold it chances are high that you saved it cause you didn't know whether you might need it for yourself later or not. (So still the probability that you might need it.)

People that sold it early ... to buy it later again when the price got cheaper - are lucky. But nobdy could have known about the drop rate change. So it really is just luck. Not that anyone could have planned this. (Unless devs use insider information while playing a own private account.)

Curious though about the spirit shard drops. How does this affect things? I have 5k+ and never used these at a larger scale. (From playing release -> end 2013 and June 2019 until now. Without ever farming.) Might also be an incentive to get the exp boost permanent account buffs in the living world season maps?

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:And they probably didn't like that some items ended up getting priced above the trade cap.

Yes, I do understand they increased the drop rate, but vaguely decreasing rarity isn't equivalent of decreasing the price to under tp limit. So yes, without more information (or time to see if there will be any consequences of this at all) for me it's still a leap. If they noticed there's one drop every x months and DOUBLED the drop rate so now we have 2 drops every x months, it sure "significantly" decreases rarity, but is it enough to decrease the price below the tp limit? Don't really think so. Without more information, it's a leap.

they made this adjustment with intention of it doing nothing

Not only that's not what I said, but also it wouldn't be the first time when a change did pretty much nothing.

@"Fueki.4753" said:I actually think this "devaluing" has not gone far enough.

They still haven't increased the supply of invisible shoe boxes.

The things they made tradeable are mostly related to crafting so it seems the primary goal here is to enable crafting, not manipulate market prices on rare items.

Thank you Arenanet for no longer treating your big spenders like shit.

If this were paired with the announcement of a new studio head I would be excited. I will settle for imagining a contingent of developers large enough to compel a long overdue change took the thread to heart. We shouldn't have to point out when the studio is blatantly failing to deliver on their design principles. The speed with which this happened introduces the possibility that real world forces came into play. Can the EULA be binding when the studio forces some players to operate outside of it to realize market agency?

Everything around the 3 infusions is mostly there to frame the changes to the infusions as being part of a larger plan.

@kharmin.7683 said:I think that with the impending expansion, and Steam release sometime soon-ish, Anet is anticipating a large influx of new (or newer?) players and they are manipulating the economy to be more favorable for the new players.

Applying a hole saw to the barriers to entry as it were.

I think the changes were great, especially the changes that made gearing characters much more obtainable.

On the infusions, In my opinion another great change and I hope this isn't the first of these kinds of changes. They're still a very rare drop I assume but at least now seeing Anet intervene with items in high demand but low supply maybe players wont hoard those kinds of items. Hopefully mystic coins are next.

Are mystic coins so difficult to obtain, I mean in comparison to these infusions?