Price fixing in Market Mystic Coins

[lare.5129]

@Chaos.7614 said:They trade in gen1 legendaries obviously...so what the point in shadow market for mc if you can buy any T1 wep on TP without any risk?But imagine, whaty no any risk. So seller say price in mc count. Buyer go on TP and look how much coast thats. If is cheaper - buy mc from TP, nop mater the price, and make change. If mc coast more, buyer buy t1 wep form TP. easy. I don see only what benefits have seller ? Try sell for less price that on TP?

MCs are used for clovers, so they are linked in price.for people who play and craft for himself like me, they not use mc's fro clovers. I have mostly all T1 weapons. No MC's used. Also have 1k clover in bank.

Maybe for you. You need to wait almost a year for logins alone for 77 cloversyes .. this is MMO game. People already play it more than 8 years. If someone want per one or few weeks craft all leg weapons - let him pay for that.

We are entering a deflationary economy in which the value of materials is increasing with no comparable gold farms. That's why he says gold is garbage.so if 1 ms = 1 gold, is ok, if 1 MS = 5 gold, gold is garbage? No :) it works if another way:)

Extremely wrong. If we go by your logic, every material in the game is unlimited because you can farm it in some way over time.yes. every material in the game is unlimited

Supply is determined by how much is being provided on the TPnot supply, one of main values is price. I have more that 2 stack MC and what sell it. But the current price is cheap for my vision.So no matter how much MCs ppl get MC. If price small - is stay on hands.

This is why that wall hasn't been taken down - the playerbase isn't generating enough MCs to offset demand and the barons aren't willing to sell because their store of value is propped up by that wall.The playerbase generating enough MCs. Ofc if you ready today pay less that 600 gold for stack. I don't see reason to panic if stack MC; prcie is 2000 gold.

the playerbase isn't generating enough MCs if person what spend small gold value. But why we should care? leg one of top content. So get gold and by if want.

[Seera.5916]

@"SASHI.7260" said:I like how

1) Some people not even using the Trading System of the game.2) Hoards a majority of the mystic coin market.3) Goes into Mail Trading over a 3rd party communication line using MC as major currency.4) Inflates the prices so much by limiting the amount in the trading post (as seen on the statistics from gw2bltc - https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/19976-Mystic-Coin at 920K Demand over 31K supply as of this posting) because why would I sell it over the TP when I can use it as a conversion method to get other stuffs over a 3rd party communication line (i.e Discord, Reddit) without paying for taxes.5) Makes a gigantic WALL @ 2g flat (444K buy order - already half of the demand and was originally at 1.8g but well, gotta inflate those riches) by using the same funds obtained from said 3rd party communication line to make it more expensive over said 3rd party communication line.

and is still NOT Price Fixing at this point.

But hey! According to ya savvy economist on this thread, Its simply the basic law of supply and demand right? nothing wrong with it. It's simply the flow on the price. It will always go up when demand goes up.

Edit : Added a small set of texts somewhere

Because supply and demand is a much simpler explanation for the rise in cost. And most of us believe that the simplest reason is the most logical.

Legendary weapons prior to the armory announcement were on a single character only. Meaning that if you had Eternity you could only have the actual Twilight greatsword on one character, even though greatsword is a meta weapon on a number of classes.

Also, it's not expensive or complicated to change stats on ascended gear and most people don't change their build multiple times in a short period of time.

So most players don't currently go for legendary weapons unless for the cosmetic due to the above.

With the announcement of the legendary armory, more players are interested in making a legendary as it will be usable on different classes. So demand went up for mystic coins.

ANet has not increased the supply of them.

Meaning that over time, the price was bound to increase to the new equilibrium price.

ANet does have to be careful with anything that would lower the cost of mystic coins due to the hoarding tendencies of players. They increase the supply too much in an effort to lower the price and players may mass sell off their coins in a race to get the most from it before it hits its new low. Tanking the market for mystic coins which will do who knows what to the other markets as the crash may increase demand for things the mystic coin is used for, especially in large quantities. If they go after the items the mystic coin uses and make them less desirable, that would make players mad who made the item for how it was and may be upset that that was changed. So that's not the way that ANet is likely to go if they feel the cost of the coin on the trading post is too high.

No one has given any proof that the coins were purchased by players who had nefarious reasons for buying them and not for actual usage or even investment. Someone just getting into the game, I'd say hold onto some mystic coins and possibly even purchase some (for those asking for things that hold value) even if it's not something you'll ever use, the price has been slowly trending up over the years and therefore a purchase today would be much more valuable in a few years when a new player would need gold to buy things they do want if they don't need the mystic coins themselves. I for one hold onto 250 and only dip below when I need the coins for something.

Most players don't use a third party site for selling their coins or buying items. I know I don't. If an item isn't on the trading post, then oh well. I don't personally want to risk getting a bad middle man and be out my coins and not get the item I want. Yes, those communities do punish and ostracize those who scam others, but unless they've been discovered, they could still be there and that's not something I want to risk.

Plus, I know the trading post tax is there for a good reason - a gold sink to help keep inflation down to a minimum.

[Crystal Paladin.3871]

comparing the timegated strictly one per day T7 crafting materials and mystic coins, it seems mystic coins price is justified to some extent.looking at gw2spidey.net, mystic coin price jumped to 1.83gold on jun 15 2020 jumped up 20 silver with huge volume of buy orders and the buy orders keeps increasing rapidly but the sell orders volume is stagnant(from nov 9 2020 to present day)looking at timegated strictly one per day t7 mats,Spiritwood plank -> sell orders exceed the buy orders by almost 2xDeldrimor steel ingot -> meeting the supply demand scale and sometimes sell orders exceeding buy orders, with one exception around may 11 2020Elonian leather square -> unknown spike around may 18 2020 for buy orers otherwise it somehow balances the scaleBolt of damask -> the sell orders try to keep up with buy orders but buy orders are higher always..(do ppl play light armor profession more ? idk)

what really confuses me is that, even though t7 mats are strictly one per day timegated(rarely u get some from some chest - not guaranteed like mystic coins when u do CMs) why are their sell orders volume is atleast acceptable level when compared to mystic coins which makes me think are the buyers keep buying them and just deleting them? or place a buy order for 200k+ mystic coins and delete gw2 account on the same day?(not emphasizing on the last paragraph.. pls ignore.. its just not up for debate X) )

[Seera.5916]

@Crystal Paladin.3871 said:comparing the timegated strictly one per day T7 crafting materials and mystic coins, it seems mystic coins price is justified to some extent.looking at gw2spidey.net, mystic coin price jumped to 1.83gold on jun 15 2020 jumped up 20 silver with huge volume of buy orders and the buy orders keeps increasing rapidly but the sell orders volume is stagnant(from nov 9 2020 to present day)looking at timegated strictly one per day t7 mats,Spiritwood plank -> sell orders exceed the buy orders by almost 2xDeldrimor steel ingot -> meeting the supply demand scale and sometimes sell orders exceeding buy orders, with one exception around may 11 2020Elonian leather square -> unknown spike around may 18 2020 for buy orers otherwise it somehow balances the scaleBolt of damask -> the sell orders try to keep up with buy orders but buy orders are higher always..(do ppl play light armor profession more ? idk)

what really confuses me is that, even though t7 mats are strictly one per day timegated(rarely u get some from some chest - not guaranteed like mystic coins when u do CMs) why are their sell orders volume is atleast acceptable level when compared to mystic coins which makes me think are the buyers keep buying them and just deleting them? or place a buy order for 200k+ mystic coins and delete gw2 account on the same day?

Players hoard mystic coins.

Players don't typically hoard the other time gated materials.

Think of hoarding mystic coins like having some stock. People want to sell at the max price. If the price of a stock is generally still rising, most people won't sell. But once it reaches what could be a peak or once it starts to fall, people will start to sell it.

The same is likely happening with mystic coins. Players don't want to sell their hoard now if in a year, the cost will be say 2 gold, 50 silver.

[Trinnitty.8256]

They won't do anything. ANET wants you to buy more accounts for log in rewards which makes them money and looks good on the books for active accounts xD

[Obtena.7952]

@Trinnitty.8256 said:They won't do anything. ANET wants you to buy more accounts for log in rewards which makes them money and looks good on the books for active accounts xD

Well, if there is a reason Anet won't do anything, it's because this isn't a problem in the first place. That logic doesn't even make sense because they give MC's away for nothing for just logging in ... if the reason Anet won't do anything is because they want revenue, they WOULDN'T be giving these away on logging in to begin with.

Let's put it this way ...it's about $50 to buy a new account ... right now that's just shy of 1400G on the exchange ... so almost 700 MC's ... anyone that is simply buying a second account just to get MC's is waiting 3 years for a break even on their investment with a daily log in and year to get enough MC's to make a legendary. In otherwords ... that's kind of a dumb way to go about buying your way into MC's.

[Ayrilana.1396]

It’s currently $30 right now although players can wait until the 50% off sales to get them cheaper. I bought multiple copies of the game from the Amazon marketplace for $13 about five years ago. This was back when there were still physical copies.

You also need to factor in all of the other ways that a new account can help you earn profit. Laurels being a very low effort way as you can buy the material bags with them for quick gold. Players can also get into what’s left of ascended material crafting and do the daily refinement for whatever is still profitable.

I’m sure someone could go and do the math and would find that the break even for buying a new account is certainly still under a year. Alt accounts have been the primary way that I earn gold in this game as I couldn’t be bothered to grind for gold. They are still a very viable way to obtain mystic coins.

Edit:

I did some rough math using T6 bags in exchange for laurels. A player can earn just shy of 61 gold per account every 28 days from login rewards alone. This comes to about 4.5 to 9.5 months, depending on whether they wait for a sale or not, until they break even.

This time can be shortened further with ascended crafting, home instance farming, charged quartz, etc. I would take into account how much time it takes to do those activities versus spending that time to grind through other farms.

[scerevisiae.1972]

It's blatant market manipulation.

High wealth individuals are propping up the market price of MCs to fuel RMT trading with gold sellers.

I'm frankly amazed Anet are not doing anything. I've heard multiple rumours of people who do nothing but flip items and sell stacks of MC to RMTs for real world $$.

[Seera.5916]

@scerevisiae.1972 said:It's blatant market manipulation.

High wealth individuals are propping up the market price of MCs to fuel RMT trading with gold sellers.

I'm frankly amazed Anet are not doing anything. I've heard multiple rumours of people who do nothing but flip items and sell stacks of MC to RMTs for real world $$.

Where is the proof that it's not simple supply and demand?

There's proof out there for it to be simple supply and demand. I've yet to see anyone come up with any proof that it's market manipulation.

Rumors are not truth and therefore can't be used as proof of market manipulation.

[KelyNeli.4516]

I dont think you could manipulate the market so aggressively.The cause of this is more trivial. There are less and less newbie players selling their coins and a lot of more advanced ones who got ascended gear and try to make legendary eq.

[SASHI.7260]

@"Seera.5916" said:Where is the proof that it's not simple supply and demand?

Just look at the statistics and that gigantic wall for the Mystic Coin (I already provided the link on my previous comment). It's not hard to see. Especially if you are a BIT aware on whats happening outside of the Trading post (such as on reddit and discords).

Someone went mad cause they got banned on the Trading Discord for RMT that they sold 32+ Chak Egg Sac at max gold value just to get enough liquid gold to put a giant wall on Mystic Coin just to fuck the market. Now said WALL keeps moving from 1.8g to 2.0g because of that trend. (Obviously you would defend that "How I know its not just random people but only one person? Can you show proof?" and my answer to this one is simple, I do not have. Just numbers to look at.)

The price on Mystic Coins at that time was floating at 1.5-1.7 per piece. Ever since that wall came up. it went from 1.8 to 2.0g in just a span of like what? 3-4 months? And now it fixed itself at above 2.0g since there are 3 sets of walls preventing it to go down (444,732 on 2g, 17,554 on 2g5c, 89,988 at 2g,10c)

Tell me if that is NOT market manipulation (Obviously me pointing at the fact that people erect WALLS of buy order that is not feasible by the market to overcome based on the supply and demand statistics). Or are you implying that hoarding and market manipulation is supply and demand?

If you really want a theoretical / speculative answer then this manipulation is directly involved with Legendary Armory since those rich people who only trade outside of the Trading Post started hoarding legendary weapons. How to hoard a lot more? Simple, inflate the currency they are using (Mystic Coin) since by doing that, they could pay LESS Mystic Coin for 1 Legendary Weapon (only at most around 900 MC per Legendary Weapon)

This would ALL be avoided for years if Player Trading via Mail/Guild Bank was NOT ALLOWED at the very start. There is a reason why Player Trading was not implemented here and there is a reason why TP has a 5% posting fee and 10% selling fee. And that is to avoid this very incident.

Edit: Woops. Did not know that would BOLD the letters up

[Cuks.8241]

But putting out an order for 400 000 MCs is a demand. And it looks like reasonable demand since people are putting out listing above it in large quantities.It's not much different from the real world. When money is cheap (low interests, lot's of money on the market) people invest in other limited goods like gold or real estate and the price of those shoots up. The price increase of MCs is not even that high.

[Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.294]

@Vilin.8056 said:

@lare.5129 said:

@Vilin.8056 said:One thing to consider with with Mystic Coin price hikes is that it deals a blow to all new and developing Guild Halls which still require many hundreds of coins to complete several essential upgrades, especially for WvW enhancements, while things gonna get worse as time pass by.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Enhancements#List_of_guild_enhancements

no any mystic coins

Hopefully we could find an alternative to these requirements.let imagine that they are .. 100 mc? 200 mc? welcome on TP. It is cheap for player who play. Don't have time to play ? gems->gold>mc also welcome.

I believe you never leveled a guild hall:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_1:_Supply_Capacity

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_2:_WvW_Experience

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_3:_Movement_Speed

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_4:_Power

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_5:_Precision

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_6:_Toughness

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_7:_Vitality

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Objective_Aura_8:_Magic_Find

I'm not even including cost for guild traders.

That would be another 225 MC for the guild traders on top of the 780 you listed for the war room. Not to mention another 50 MC for upgrading the guild tavern. So 1055 total. And I've leveled one basically solo and assisted two others. I still practically a reflex to farm every flax node I cross plus at least one farm on a daily basis.

[lare.5129]

@Trinnitty.8256 said:They won't do anything. ANET wants you to buy more accounts for log in rewards which makes them money and looks good on the books for active accounts xDI am sure ANET don't have that plan. Also 99.9999% player also don't see reason buy second acc ONLY for MC'sNeed MC's buy it from TP. Is is cheap now. Don't have gold ? play or buy gems. Not see problem.

[lare.5129]

@SASHI.7260 said:speculative answer then this manipulation is directly involved with Legendary Armory since those rich people who only trade outside of the Trading Post started hoarding legendary weapons.oh, if someone need leg weapon as Leg weapon - person can cfraft T1, and not spend 250 mc for T2. For that needed cms value is 0

How to hoard a lot more? Simple, inflate the currency they are using (Mystic Coin) since by doing that, they could pay LESS Mystic Coin for 1 Legendary Weaponas I say people who play gw2 and don't try it do per one day need zero Mcs

This would ALL be avoided for years if Player Trading via Mail/Guild Bank was NOT ALLOWED at the very start.doing that person get risk to lose all. Using TP fee is guarantee no be lose 100% So if someone like risk - don't see reason not allowed that. It absolutely not disturb me.

[lare.5129]

@"Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946" said:So 1055 total.

so it less that 3000 gold ? easy. Also keep that make for evryone his own guild is not strong requirement. Same whit leg weapons.

[Super Hayes.6890]

The price of MC's going up simply means logging in is becoming more profitable. That is awesome! If you want to stick it to the people you think are manipulating the market you can simply not buy them and hold on to the free ones you get logging in. There really isn't a problem here. Just some text walls of people that want to pay less than market value for MC's.

[Seera.5916]

@SASHI.7260 said:

@"Seera.5916" said:Where is the proof that it's not simple supply and demand?

Just look at the statistics and that gigantic wall for the Mystic Coin (I already provided the link on my previous comment). It's not hard to see. Especially if you are a BIT aware on whats happening outside of the Trading post (such as on reddit and discords).

Someone went mad cause they got banned on the Trading Discord for RMT that they sold 32+ Chak Egg Sac at max gold value just to get enough liquid gold to put a giant wall on Mystic Coin just to kitten the market. Now said WALL keeps moving from 1.8g to 2.0g because of that trend. (Obviously you would defend that "How I know its not just random people but only one person? Can you show proof?" and my answer to this one is simple, I do not have. Just numbers to look at.)

The price on Mystic Coins at that time was floating at 1.5-1.7 per piece. Ever since that wall came up. it went from 1.8 to 2.0g in just a span of like what? 3-4 months? And now it fixed itself at above 2.0g since there are 3 sets of walls preventing it to go down (444,732 on 2g, 17,554 on 2g5c, 89,988 at 2g,10c)

Tell me if that is NOT market manipulation (Obviously me pointing at the fact that people erect WALLS of buy order that is not feasible by the market to overcome based on the supply and demand statistics). Or are you implying that hoarding and market manipulation is supply and demand?

If you really want a theoretical / speculative answer then this manipulation is directly involved with Legendary Armory since those rich people who only trade outside of the Trading Post started hoarding legendary weapons. How to hoard a lot more? Simple, inflate the currency they are using (Mystic Coin) since by doing that, they could pay LESS Mystic Coin for 1 Legendary Weapon (only at most around 900 MC per Legendary Weapon)

This would ALL be avoided for years if Player Trading via Mail/Guild Bank was NOT ALLOWED at the very start. There is a reason why Player Trading was not implemented here and there is a reason why TP has a 5% posting fee and 10% selling fee. And that is to avoid this very incident.

Edit: Woops. Did not know that would BOLD the letters up

One person can't manipulate a market this large. Anything one person did would be quickly corrected unless the price they raised it to was the actual equilibrium price and they just shortened the time it took the item to get there.

So again where is the proof that it is market manipulation and not simple supply and demand?

[Trinnitty.8256]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Trinnitty.8256 said:They won't do anything. ANET wants you to buy more accounts for log in rewards which makes them money and looks good on the books for active accounts xD

Well, if there is a reason Anet won't do anything, it's because this isn't a problem in the first place. That logic doesn't even make sense because they give MC's away for nothing for just logging in ... if the reason Anet won't do anything is because they want revenue, they WOULDN'T be giving these away on logging in to begin with.

Let's put it this way ...it's about $50 to buy a new account ... right now that's just shy of 1400G on the exchange ... so almost 700 MC's ... anyone that is simply buying a second account just to get MC's is waiting 3 years for a break even on their investment with a daily log in and year to get enough MC's to make a legendary. In otherwords ... that's kind of a dumb way to go about buying your way into MC's.

A new Account is $15.00 when on sale. {edit} Don't forget to add in the laurel log in reward can be used to convert to gold. So you get 2 gold a day if you do 3 Dailys, mystic coins and laurels. the daily mystic forger also gives 1 mystic coin for no effort.

The biggest problem is and has always been mystic coins being used as a currency to bypass 500 gold mail transfer limit and to bypass the trading post maximum sale price limit on poorly implemented super low drop rates on some items. Also avoiding TP tax on big gold items.

[Mannah.4012]

I have always thought that allowing to convert laurels to MC could be a good idea to fix this problem (in addition to the actual ways to obtain MC). I mean, laurels are time gated, there are not other ways to obtain them apart from loging daily and most of us have a ton of them without any use... I'm not an economist, of course it would have some negative consecuences but... it could be a solution. It's just a personal opinion.

[kharmin.7683]

That sounds more like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. If Anet thought there was a problem, and/or true manipulation were occurring, then they would correct it.

[Obtena.7952]

@Trinnitty.8256 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Trinnitty.8256 said:They won't do anything. ANET wants you to buy more accounts for log in rewards which makes them money and looks good on the books for active accounts xD

Well, if there is a reason Anet won't do anything, it's because this isn't a problem in the first place. That logic doesn't even make sense because they give MC's away for nothing for just logging in ... if the reason Anet won't do anything is because they want revenue, they WOULDN'T be giving these away on logging in to begin with.

Let's put it this way ...it's about $50 to buy a new account ... right now that's just shy of 1400G on the exchange ... so almost 700 MC's ... anyone that is simply buying a second account just to get MC's is waiting 3 years for a break even on their investment with a daily log in and year to get enough MC's to make a legendary. In otherwords ... that's kind of a dumb way to go about buying your way into MC's.

A new Account is $15.00 when on sale. {edit} Don't forget to add in the laurel log in reward can be used to convert to gold. So you get 2 gold a day if you do 3 Dailys, mystic coins and laurels. the daily mystic forger also gives 1 mystic coin for no effort.

The biggest problem is and has always been mystic coins being used as a currency to bypass 500 gold mail transfer limit and to bypass the trading post maximum sale price limit on poorly implemented super low drop rates on some items. Also avoiding TP tax on big gold items.

OK ... that doesn't change the fact that this doesn't have anything to do with Anet wanting revenue through new account sales since it's not the way anyone wanting to 'buy' MC's would do so in the first place. Also, MC price isn't a problem that Anet needs to fix. It's COMPLETELY driven by supply and demand, EVEN if that's some use for the MC's outside of crafting.

[lare.5129]

@"Trinnitty.8256" said:A new Account is $15.00 when on sale.

have one more account it make from game - job. So more easy buy gems - convert and buy it asap if you need. Only 0.0000001 will be do that "monkey bussiness" wiht second acount

The biggest problem is and has always been mystic coins being used as a currency to bypass 500 gold mail transfer limit and to bypass the trading post maximum sale price limit on poorly implemented super low drop rates on some items. Also avoiding TP tax on big gold items.This market is small. How man ppl buy chak infusion ? 1 ? 3 ? 5 ? totaly all use tp for common things. So there is no any "biggest problem"

@Mannah.4012 said:I have always thought that allowing to convert laurels to MC could be a good idea to fix this problem (in addition to the actual ways to obtain MC).for that? need more - buy from TP without any timegate

As I say many people as me have a lot of MC on hand, but 2 gold is cheap and funny price.

[lare.5129]

@"kharmin.7683" said:That sounds more like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

there is no any "solution". Why ? because there is no any problem. Welcome on TP

[Only Even.6193]

Just add trade fees for Orders to prevent Walls shenanigans.