Trophy Shipments' worth

[Harfang.1507]

I do not play GW2 to be a rich stock broker. I want to be in the field, having adventures. This being said, I accept the fact that devoting a few minutes daily to maintain a certain level of income (i.e., gold) enhances one's enjoyment of the game. For years, the bulk of my daily 'pocket money' has come from doing my dailies, using my Ley-Energy Matter Converter, harvesting my home instance (chiefly sprockets and powdered rose quartz) and reselling Trophy Shipments, obtained in good part thanks to my Volatile Magic tools. In short, stuff I can easily obtain in 10-30 min of gameplay.

I noted how little money Trophy Shipments are now bringing in. For the longest of time, the rule of thumb was that every 1 gold invested in them brought you back 1.5 gold, a 50% return on investment (ROI). As of the time of writing, it is a mere 15% ROI. [Source: Fast Farming Community]I have seen in the 5% ROI range last week. In short, it is quickly nearing the 'not worth my time' category.

Curious, I checked gw2bltc.com on T6 trophies selling prices over the last year. Most have decreased by 30 or 40%. Piles of Crystalline Dust were the worst (13 s to 7 s), while Vicious Claws were the sole ones to increase (11 s to 13 s). All appear to have stabilised at the new, low prices, or are still in decline.

So . . . I am not sure where to go from there. Do people have solid theories as to why we observe this decline? How to make up for it? Sadly, I cannot participate daily in instanced group content, and I am not interested in having to play the tp. Suggestions?

[Schimmi.6872]

17 minutes ago, Harfang.1507 said:

I do not play GW2 to be a rich stock broker. I want to be in the field, having adventures. This being said, I accept the fact that devoting a few minutes daily to maintain a certain level of income (i.e., gold) enhances one's enjoyment of the game. For years, the bulk of my daily 'pocket money' has come from doing my dailies, using my Ley-Energy Matter Converter, harvesting my home instance (chiefly sprockets and powdered rose quartz) and reselling Trophy Shipments, obtained in good part thanks to my Volatile Magic tools. In short, stuff I can easily obtain in 10-30 min of gameplay.

I noted how little money Trophy Shipments are now bringing in. For the longest of time, the rule of thumb was that every 1 gold invested in them brought you back 1.5 gold, a 50% return on investment (ROI). As of the time of writing, it is a mere 15% ROI. [Source: Fast Farming Community]I have seen in the 5% ROI range last week. In short, it is quickly nearing the 'not worth my time' category.

Curious, I checked gw2bltc.com on T6 trophies selling prices over the last year. Most have decreased by 30 or 40%. Piles of Crystalline Dust were the worst (13 s to 7 s), while Vicious Claws were the sole ones to increase (11 s to 13 s). All appear to have stabilised at the new, low prices, or are still in decline.

So . . . I am not sure where to go from there. Do people have solid theories as to why we observe this decline? How to make up for it? Sadly, I cannot participate daily in instanced group content, and I am not interested in having to play the tp. Suggestions?

If you scroll further down on gw2bltc, you will see the reason for the declining price, the supply is going up and the demand is stagnating or sinking. There have been no new larger sinks for this materials in the last year(s), even the gen 3 legies need less of T6 materials than gen 1 & 2. Dust is the worst, because ectos have the same problem.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Schimmi.6872

[Firebeard.1746]

A few things happened simultaneously: 

1) They halved the amount of trophies required to craft a legendary in Gen3 compared to Gen2

2) They've been selling VM tools for a long time so more and more players have been buying them, possibly through gold conversions. There's been no replacement since Season 4 that's even close, so it makes sense people would be getting them. 

3) Jade slivers don't require gold in order to convert into shipments.

4) Scavenger protocols for shipments have also contributed to supply

 

All of this contributed to the oversupply issue mentioned previously in the thread. The cynical side of me is expecting a new tool type that gives jade slivers to drop in Season 6. I expect #1, #3 and #4 had the greatest impact, unless lots of people are hitting their limit in terms of legendaries they want to craft. 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Firebeard.1746

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Harfang.1507 said:

How to make up for it?

You already know the fastfarming site, so not much left to do other than just picking something for yourself. Daily, metas, alt parking, w/e.

21 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

3) Jade slivers don't require gold in order to convert into shipments.

Why jade sliver into shipments, when you can use scavenger protocols instead? (although after that swap, the point 3 still remains)

Edited January 16, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Firebeard.1746]

34 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Why jade sliver into shipments, when you can use scavenger protocols instead? (although after that swap, the point 3 still remains)

There's those too. I'll add them. There's breakdowns of when one is better than the other, but that's not the topic of this thread. 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Firebeard.1746

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

They need to reduce the gold cost both on shipments and magic warped bundles/packets. That said, keep in mind you were never meant to use these for profit, they were intended to help you craft legendaries directly; players farming volatile magic with the tools and selling shipments wasn't likely intended.

 

Its one of the reasons the meta events in Domain of Istan were nerfed so much.

 

Also, the developers have stated in the past that in general, materials becoming cheaper is good for the game. The Trading Post is supply and demand based with player-set prices and sometimes has items costing hundreds of times their vendor value. They want people to be crafting ascended and even legendary gear (as in literally as many people as possible), not avoiding it, which is why they made Gen3 so much cheaper to make.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Sobx.1758]

25 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

They need to reduce the gold cost both on shipments and magic warped bundles/packets

Why is that?

 

37 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

There's those too. I'll add them. There's breakdowns of when one is better than the other, but that's not the topic of this thread. 

From my understanding, the scavenger protocol is better value no matter what and even moreso when someone is intending to use jade sliver as part of the shipment -> material/gold exchange. The overal material quantity is probably influenced way more by the scavenger protocols, but as I said that leaves the point 3 as "jade bot added more passive loot".

Edited January 16, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

16 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Why is that?

 

From my understanding, the scavenger protocol is better value no matter what and even moreso when someone is intending to use jade sliver as part of the shipment -> material/gold exchange. The overal material quantity is probably influenced way more by the scavenger protocols, but as I said that leaves the point 3 as "jade bot added more passive loot".

Most of the shipments aren't even bought anymore (just trophies), because the profit margin is negative, as in you lose gold by buying it, even if you intend to use the materials for yourself; its cheaper to buy them from other players. This is a bad design, because it only accounted for the state of the game at the time of development and not future viability, and its a problem many areas of the game are starting to have now that its getting old.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Sobx.1758]

9 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Most of the shipments aren't even bought anymore (just trophies), because the profit margin is negative, as in you lose gold by buying it, even if you intend to use the materials for yourself; its cheaper to buy them from other players. This is a bad design, because it only accounted for the state of the game at the top of development, and not future viability.

It somehow might have been a "bad design" if it was in any way intended as a main source of those materials for the players, but they never were. By your own words (although I don't know if true), they probably weren't intended to use for profit and yet majority of people spamming those shipments used them exactly for that (...and just look at this thread). You make the price lower and all it remains is being a "cheat code" to multiply part of your gold passively simply by using volatile gathering tools (or minion necro, from what we've seen). So then the price gets driven even lower, so the gain gets lower too (or into negative values for some shipments). What then? Decrease the cost again? And... again? And...?

The point is: I don't get the plan here. Should anet keep re-adjusting the price of shipment every month to make sure it's worth buying, but not abusing as a free passive gold multiplier? Because the price was, is and will not be stable. As long as it will be profitable, people will keep spamming it. Is using 3 of 5 shipments negative gold value? Ok, then just buy mats instead, what's the issue?

Edited January 16, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Firebeard.1746]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Why is that?

 

From my understanding, the scavenger protocol is better value no matter what and even moreso when someone is intending to use jade sliver as part of the shipment -> material/gold exchange. The overal material quantity is probably influenced way more by the scavenger protocols, but as I said that leaves the point 3 as "jade bot added more passive loot".

That could be correct. The real reason I took jade slivers was because I have a lot of HoT-era precursors sitting on the backburner and don't often play HoT content. It's not super efficient in terms of conversions, but it saves me from having to go out of my way to do particular metas. I did see it on a guide somewhere that for particular functions it's possible that the slivers are more valuable. I.e. if you're farming a lot of certain nodes/not killing much. I'll probably swap over to scavenger protocol once I finish them. 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Firebeard.1746

[Infusion.7149]

The real reason to use the jade slivers upgrade is not profit but to keep your inventory clean of trash items (spikes), especially in WVW or while fishing. If you want profit and not accountbound currencies then the scavenger protocol will always pull out ahead.
It still needs work since anything you get from chests isn't autoconverted unless you loot a trash item that matches what is on the stack.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[Tiamat.8254]

This was also my main source of income. I thought maybe there was a syndicate purposefully ruining the market because of afk farmers 😂

 

But yes it is crap. The volatile magic gathering tools are pretty much worthless now. If you need the items you're better off buying them on the tp. 

[Wolfshade.9251]

Same here, I used to farm Bjora chests, covert ice-shards to volatile and get some nice profit from that. It's not really worth it anymore so I'm back to farming fractals for raw gold - at least that won't go away anytime soon (unless...).

[Cuks.8241]

16 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Most of the shipments aren't even bought anymore (just trophies), because the profit margin is negative, as in you lose gold by buying it, even if you intend to use the materials for yourself; its cheaper to buy them from other players. This is a bad design, because it only accounted for the state of the game at the time of development and not future viability, and its a problem many areas of the game are starting to have now that its getting old.

Reducing price of shipments would only propagate what is going on right now, price freefall for many materials.

I dont think this is good for the game. Stock of mats on tp is going up, many mats are closing on the minimum price. Soon we'll be vendoring them because why bother with tp for a few coppers.

For me personally its great because I have thousands of gold in bank. But for the game in general I dont think its good. Content that rewards mostly mats (most of ow) is becoming less rewarding. 

I think soon anet will have to do an adjustment or some big new sinks. 

[DarcShriek.5829]

No new items to create in nearly a year also contributes to the decline in prices.

[mythical.6315]

22 hours ago, Harfang.1507 said:

Do people have solid theories as to why we observe this decline?

Yes but discussion on it will just result in the thread being locked. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

If you really want the prices to go back up all the devs would have to do is gather together all the RNG drops in the game like the rare infusions and put them on a vendor for insane material sinks.

[aereton.5491]

Take a look at Istan or Kourna and you get why. We're not allowed to discuss this topic on the forums and """content creators""" don't want to talk about it either, so nothing will ever change. You either accept it as it is or look for a game that has better community standards.

[Daniyyel.3428]

just found out it was fake.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Daniyyel.3428
delete cause it was fake

[Linken.6345]

40 minutes ago, Daniyyel.3428 said:

  When  person on reddit can post screen shots of their account ranked in top 6 in wealth on gw2efficiency  with over 1 million gold in account value.   Making it very clear  the wealth on their account  is all because of that which cannot be mentioned on this forum yet done by many in the game every day.

I did not know you were not allowed to talk about trading post flipping.

[Daniyyel.3428]

On 1/16/2023 at 10:11 PM, Linken.6345 said:

I did not know you were not allowed to talk about trading post flipping.

it was a fake post

Edited January 18, 2023 by Daniyyel.3428

[Schimmi.6872]

14 hours ago, Daniyyel.3428 said:

They made it clear it wasn't trading post.  even showed screen shots of the best places.    It was posted a few days ago and up on reddit. 

Does the thing that shouldn't be mentiond exists, yes. Does it have some influence on the market, yes. The question is, how big is this influence and to answer this, we would need more reliable data. Some random claims on reddit don't help, especially in the case of the mentioned post, as it was very likely a fake.

[Sobx.1758]

21 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

If you really want the prices to go back up all the devs would have to do is gather together all the RNG drops in the game like the rare infusions and put them on a vendor for insane material sinks.

Nope, that's not really a solution for anything here.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Daniyyel.3428]

12 hours ago, Schimmi.6872 said:

Does the thing that shouldn't be mentiond exists, yes. Does it have some influence on the market, yes. The question is, how big is this influence and to answer this, we would need more reliable data. Some random claims on reddit don't help, especially in the case of the mentioned post, as it was very likely a fake.

  We have  youtubers showing the same thing,  even saying that which should not be named allowed them to buy every legendary in the game..     You're correct we have no idea the impact it has on game.  I just know from my farming karma 6 months ago I rarely seen any problem on the lw4 maps,  Now I see more of them than people actually  playing the game.  Is what it is though.  I don't like it but know there isn't anything I can do about it.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Daniyyel.3428

[Schimmi.6872]

1 hour ago, Daniyyel.3428 said:

could be fake,  may not be. after reading it I doubt that it is.  We have other youtubers showing the same thing,  even saying that which should not be named allowed them to buy every legendary in the game.     It was an interesting read.  Mainly why the person talked about acquiring so much gold ruining the game for them.     You're correct we have no idea the impact it has on game.  I just know from my farming karma 6 months ago I rarely seen any problem on the lw4 maps,  Now I see more of them than people actually  playing the game.  Is what it is though.  I don't like it but know there isn't anything I can do about it.

I don't like it too, but I also think that spreading some made up stories, even, if it raises the awarness for this problem, isn't a good thing, it may even have the opposite effect and motivate players, if they see such large sums.

 

Just an explanation why I doubt the story (it was removed in the meantime anyway), if efficiency wasn't just coincidentally bugged at the moment the screenshot was taken, it was already about 2 years old and maybe just copied from somewhere else. The post-history also leave some doubts.