Make Materials Valuable Again...

I find it depressing that most of the original end-game/t6 materials are becoming worthless compared to their lower tier counterparts. Ancient wood, orichalcum, and gossamer are garbage. Lodestones are at an all-time low.

I understand Anet wants to maintain the value of lower tiers, and thus have created material sinks in the form of ascended crafting, precursor crafting, etc... however when those materials are more valuable than their higher tier counterparts something is very wrong.

The solutionis obvious - Increase demand. Supply for these items is bountiful, so we need more recipes that use high quantities of them. They really missed an opportunity to work Crystal Lodestones into crafting the new weapon set. Thoughts?

There isn't anything 'very wrong' with lower tier mats being worth more than higher ones. The solution isn't obvious because there isn't a problem here; It doesn't make sense for Anet to engineer higher prices on mats you feel should be worth more.

I look at cured hardened leather prices, and the last thing I want is for ANet to "fix" the cheap T6 material costs. D:

@"jwaz.1908" said:I find it depressing that most of the original end-game/t6 materials are becoming worthless compared to their lower tier counterparts. Ancient wood, orichalcum, and gossamer are garbage.This isn't new. These items trended down ages ago.

Lodestones are at an all-time low.Also not new. And it seems deliberate.

I understand Anet wants to maintain the value of lower tiers, and thus have created material sinks in the form of ascended crafting, precursor crafting, etc... however when those materials are more valuable than their higher tier counterparts something is very wrong.

What exactly is wrong? Is there are rule that says T6 has to be worth more than T2?There are two economic forces at work. First, more players are L80 playing L80 content, which is where T5 & T6 mats drop (from nodes and from foes, outside of unID gear). It's inevitable in all games that more of this category enters the economy than any other tier. Higher supply means lower prices.

The second force is ANet wanting to distribute wealth and players throughout the game. New players spend more time in sub-L80 areas benefit the most from higher mid-tier prices, so ANet naturally favors markets that favor these poorer players. Similarly, ANet has a vested interest in seeing veterans return to older maps; higher priced mid-tier mats help with that.

The solutionis obvious - Increase demand.You still haven't established a problem beyond you "find it depressing." What is the economic issue?

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:What exactly is wrong? Is there are rule that says T6 has to be worth more than T2?

The general rule of thumb in RPGs is that the higher the tier of crafting material, the higher the cost, that's just basic RPG logic.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:You still haven't established a problem beyond you "find it depressing." What is the economic issue?

The problem is that these materials were intending to be exciting and valuable drops, but as the game gets older, Anet has abandoned mats such as lodestones. Anet could have easily added numerous Crystal Lodestone sinks in POF and LWS4 seeing that we're dealing with the crystal dragon. They added Mordrem and Evergreen lodestones in HOT, but with hardly any recipes both are worthless.

You haven't actually established a problem here; the question is an economic one, not emotional. General rules of thumb are irrelevant and the prices are determined by whatever the market dictates; it's not something Anet controls directly. It is in fact, much more work for zero added value to attempt to artificially control mat prices.

@"Skotlex.7580" said:I look at cured hardened leather prices, and the last thing I want is for ANet to "fix" the cheap T6 material costs. D:

Oh yes... The fix for leather prices... Yeah nope...

@jwaz.1908 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:What exactly is wrong? Is there are rule that says T6 has to be worth more than T2?

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:You still haven't established a problem beyond you "find it depressing." What is the

economic

issue?

But again, what is wrong with that? How is that bad for the community?

T6 stuff is low value for the simple reason, they are endgame lvl 80 drops. Thusly the amount of it exceeds anything else by magnitudes.

rare crafting materials are pretty awful for the crafters, and a jackpot for the sellers. We already have that for many of the crafting materials introduced since HOT.

I think the issue is that it isn't possible to make worthwhile a material that drops like candy. Orihalcum drops a lot from salvaged materials and nodes, same for ancient wood. There's no way there will be enough sinks to offset to supply stream into the economy unless we get some hyperinflation issues in the game.

The other T6 are somewhat rare, and they already have some sinks, like legendary crafting. I imagine, ANet could introduce new legendaries that use the other T6 materials, but do we really want the items that actually use them for crafting to have their costs skyrocket (I imagine a few sigils / runes would be heavily impacted)?

Stop being so greedy. geez.

If we want to go with logic. At equal demand rarer stuff will be more valuable than less rare stuff. Most people will be playing in higher level content most of the time so those are the things being acquired. If you want to make high tier stuff more expensive then you either drastically increase the quantity needed for recipes or drastically decrease their drop rates. They both accomplish the same but decreasing drop rate would be better for bank space while giving a worse experience.

@Khisanth.2948 said:If we want to go with logic. At equal demand rarer stuff will be more valuable than less rare stuff. Most people will be playing in higher level content most of the time so those are the things being acquired. If you want to make high tier stuff more expensive then you either drastically increase the quantity needed for recipes or drastically decrease their drop rates. They both accomplish the same but decreasing drop rate would be better for bank space while giving a worse experience.

Or update drop tables across the board with items like season 3, metal, wood and cloth chunks that can salavage into any tier materials.

Did you stock up on T6 mats, hoping to make profit as time goes by? And then lost gold due to those mats dropping in price?

@Linken.6345 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:If we want to go with logic. At equal demand rarer stuff will be more valuable than less rare stuff. Most people will be playing in higher level content most of the time so those are the things being acquired. If you want to make high tier stuff more expensive then you either drastically increase the quantity needed for recipes or drastically decrease their drop rates. They both accomplish the same but decreasing drop rate would be better for bank space while giving a worse experience.

Then why not just eliminate tiers altogether and have everything use the same materials?

try high tier leather, it tuns that little gold i have in to nothingness.....

I'm sorry, but I can't recall any MMO where the highest tier mat wasn't among the cheapest, at least after a fair amount of time had passed after a new tier was introduced. The reasons for this have been outlined more than once here. This is a non issue.

The problem is crafting as a whole should be profitable but it is not. Look at something like RuneScape (I haven't played it in forever, but) -- nearly every mat had actual value to players, and one could spend time simply crafting and selling to save up some gold.

Edit: and don't you give me the timegated garbage as an exception -- that just adds to the problem. Crafting should be encouraged and not discouraged by timegates.

To make crafting profitable you basically have to make the process much more expensive and/or horrible so that the majority avoids it.

In GW2 we have the complete opposite. The most direct acquisition method for the best gear(ascended) forces everyone to level every craft. This drastically reduces the number of potential buyers for whatever you are crafting. Why pay for someone to craft something when you can craft it yourself? What you have left with are people who still somehow think the GW2 crafting system is too complicated and those who seem to have allergies to anything that is not the specific set of activities they like.

@"icy.9250" said:The problem is crafting as a whole should be profitable but it is not.Why? Why does "crafting as whole" need to be profitable? Aspects of crafting are profitable, and have been since the game launched, other parts aren't; that's how a complex economy functions.

Look at something like RuneScape (I haven't played it in forever, but) -- nearly every mat had actual value to players, and one could spend time simply crafting and selling to save up some gold.ANet has gone to some trouble to reward folks for participating in events, not just for crafting.

Edit: and don't you give me the timegated garbage as an exception -- that just adds to the problem. Crafting should be encouraged and not discouraged by timegates.Crafting is encouraged by timegates: people are willing to pay more to avoid them.

Here's the thing: people also pay more to buy refined planks, bolts, etc. We can already profit from buying the unrefined components at market lows and reselling at market peaks during a single day (depending on the item), because some people won't want to spend the time refining.

@icy.9250 said:The problem is crafting as a whole should be profitable but it is not. Look at something like RuneScape (I haven't played it in forever, but) -- nearly every mat had actual value to players, and one could spend time simply crafting and selling to save up some gold.

Edit: and don't you give me the timegated garbage as an exception -- that just adds to the problem. Crafting should be encouraged and not discouraged by timegates.

Wait ... is this another one of those 'rules of thumb'? Crafting doesn't need to be profitable at all.

Crafting cant be profitable whilst all players can be crafters.What makes something valuable is the ability to make things that other players cannot , and in an MMO the design of the game assumes that everyone can do everything.There are some amusing absurdities though which arnt unique to this game.eg copper ingots are worth twice as much as gold ingots.Mithril ingots are worth the same as copper ingots , which is odd because in most MMOs mithril is supposed to be a extremely rare mythical material that only dwarves could make.Ive often wondered whether in MMOs which have economies there should be a wider range of professions than just the traditional ones.eg players could choose to be a crafter where you could make things that other players couldnt, but the downside would be that you have no offensive capabilities at all and couldnt kill anything, so you would be limited to making things , exploring the world and doing jumping puzzles.To make the profession a bit more attractive , crafters could have limited defensive capabilities to allow them to evade monsters a bit more easily than normal players.But this wont catch on , as for most players , killing things is the only reason to play MMOs.Although back in the days when I played WOW, one of my friends was a pacifist and got to L60 without killing anything, was slow going though.

@mauried.5608 said:Mithril ingots are worth the same as copper ingots , which is odd because in most MMOs mithril is supposed to be a extremely rare mythical material that only dwarves could make.Mithril is a made up word, so it's completely unsurprising that it doesn't mean the same in all games. In GW2, it's just a word with no special meaning or inherent rarity or value. Obviously it's borrowed from Tolkien, as it was for other games, but that doesn't mean it's something only dwarves use.

There are some amusing absurdities though which arnt unique to this game.eg copper ingots are worth twice as much as gold ingots.It's only odd if you think that the value of mats in a game should bear that much relationship to the value of mats in the real world.

@mauried.5608 said:Crafting cant be profitable whilst all players can be crafters.This is true. The more accessible crafting is, the less profitable potential.

Back before ascended crafting, the OP's claim was true, T6 anything was more valuable than the rest, because they were the only relevant material tier, everything else hardly passed vendor value.

ANet's design of ascended crafting intentionally took this into account and injected value again to lower tiers, which lead to the current situation: Despite most tiers being needed for crafting, everybody and their dogs plays level 80 content, thus only acquiring high tier materials. High demand for all tiers + high supply of T5/6 with low supply of the others = high cost for lower tiers.

And this actually works fine because it adds an additional motivation to do lower level content (or not, as the direct consequence is that the optimal money making method involves opening bags in middle level characters).

I don't see a problem with adding sinks into the game. The question is, what purpose would those sinks be used for?

I don't think they're going to change crafting much besides just adding more bloat to it. Best I can come up with is adding advanced levels to crafting (annotated by a +X next to levels) that simply make your crafting more efficient (i.e. chance for expending fewer materials) and make gaining those level exceptionally expensive and using lots of materials. It would serve no purpose but to give players some sort of superficial placebo of advancement but could get people to burn more materials.

I wouldn't look to make certain materials more valuable, just give more ways to burn them (besides vendoring them). That's all.