Do something about MC supply

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

1 hour ago, Minna.7895 said:

Please don't, the only thing that is going to achieve is making the WV more annoying nothing else. The demand is simply going up due to (not necessarily in that order):

1. legy relic is on the horizon and we don't know what will be needed exactly so chances are even ppl who wouldn't need MC otherwise won't sell them atm unless they need gold very urgently

2. legy PVE armor will need MC (atleast in the form of converted to clovers) and my guess is many are already collecting stuff for those

3. legy weapons were made available through WV either to make them and sell or (and this may be the bigger group influenzing MC prices) players who couldn't afford those weapons before are making them for themselves now that they are less of a struggle, so instead of selling their MC they now not only keep them for themselves but are also more inclined to buy some extra.

4. clovers got reduced by WV and due to the price of MC being low (under 3gold) combined with the price of t6 being relatively high - gamba is not as bad as it used to be once upon a time ... you still won't turn a profit but the loss isn't that bad considering you'll get clovers out of it (as long as you still need them and with the WV Gen1 Legys you need more that for Gen3 so yeah)

5. whatever I may have forgotten 😉

You are talking about a different thing. There are two distinct issues here; how many MCs are available and whether there is enough for the demand, and when those MCs are made available from the various sources.

You are talking about fixing the first issue. I was talking about fixing the second, where ALL of the MCs from the WV are taken at pretty much the same time. Leading to a 3 month period where that source effectively doesn't exist. Both are causing the spike in the price of MCs.

If they smooth out the availability of MCs from the WV, then they could look at how demand is, and whether they need to increase the availability either through the WV or from other sources.

[Zaraki.5784]

19 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

Yeah, re-enable the old login reward system so the scripters with loads of accounts can spam MCs on the market again.

As long as prices gets lower I'm fine with that too.

[Danikat.8537]

Is it possible that part of the change is that Anet have successfully discouraged players farming login rewards on dozens of alt accounts? (Something they were asked to do repeatedly for years.) I know the focus of that complaint was that they'd drive down the price of materials from the crafting bags and laurels, but it would have had a similar impact on Mystic Coins.

That's a genuine question BTW, I don't know. The Wizard's Vault has actually got me back to playing my second account more, but I've only got the one (two technically, but I almost never use the free one) and it was never just for farming. I can imagine if someone had 10+ accounts they just logged into to collect the reward and nothing else the idea of doing dailies or weeklies on all of them is not going to be appealing.

But I think what we're seeing is actually much more long-term trends. If you look at the full price history of Mystic Coins it was going up steadily from about November 2014 until about June 2021 when it dropped, then it started rising again in about October 2021. Even if you look at just the recent history in more detail it doesn't fit with the WV, or SotO being the only cause:

This is showing the TP buy and sell prices and the supply and demand from January 2023 until January 2024. The Wizard's Vault was announced on the 15th August 2023 and launched on the 22nd with the rest of SotO. The first WV season ran for 77 days, until 31st October, the second season began immediately after.

There's a slight jump in price from the 14th - 18th August (when the WV was announced), but only going from 1.41g - 1.55g, then the price drops shortly after SotO is released, rising equally sharply in late September/early October. That will be due to the WV, specifically specifically speculators buying up coins when it's announced then either dumping them when it was released and the actual supply and cost was known or other players priositising using AA for Coins and selling them for gold. That's followed by an equally sharp recovery in late September/early October.

But what I find interesting is there's no accompanying change in supply or demand around the same time. The supply increased slightly during that initial price jump, from just over 74,000 - just over 89,000 (Before anyone freaks about about 'maximum legendaries it's possible to make' please remember 'supply' means the number currently for sale on the TP, not the total number of coins in the game.) then dropped back around the 20th September but is relatively consistent and demand likewise barely changed, so it looks like the price change there is all due to speculation.

There is however a very big jump in demand in early March 2023, but I'm not sure why. That's around the time What Lies Beneath came out, but I don't know of anything in that episode which would increase demand for Mystic Coins (if anyone does know please tell me).

The other reason I think it's speculation rather than actual supply or demand issues is the pattern isn't repeated in early November when the Wizard's Vault refreshed. There's no dip in price (or increase in supply) when 'everyone' trades AA for Mystic Coins and sells them and no spike afterwards when that supply dries up until the next refresh. I think that was a one-off caused by the unfamiliarily of the new system, not actual changes in supply (or demand).

More importantly looking at the price of Mystic Coins across the whole of the game's life that was a tiny, tiny, blip that barely even registers:

The price was rising relatively steadily from about November 2014, dropped significantly in mid 2021 but was rising again before the WV or SotO was even announced. I think what's more likely than this all being due to the WV is something happened back in 2021 which caused the price to drop (in spite of rising demand) but then it started to recover and has now returned to it's previous levels.

I'm not sure what caused that though. My best guess is EoD legendaries not requiring as many Mystic Coins, followed by speculation that SotO ones (specifically the new armour) will do, but I don't know. Especially since the demand actually increased when the price was dropping and increased again when it started going up.

[Minna.7895]

I get what you are saying (edit @Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 ), but another thing to consider is: most people don't even sell their MC in general nvm if earned over time or in one go. If you make the system more annoying for most players (and btw also for the few ones that do sell their MC).

Not everyone who had 50+ altaccounts is even doing the WV stuff each circle on every alt to get MC to sell, but the few ones that still use their alts for that (rotate log through them + play every other week to collect astral -instead of log in all of them every day and just collect rewards -and get the MC and stuff for the circle). This change would even lower the number of players still doing that and putting up with the new systems on altaccounts (wich are the ones more likely to even sell MC, because their generation is higher than their need for the mainaccount will ever be). If they have to put up with another timerestriction on top, their number will likely go down even further (just a guess though, I only have 2 altaccounts and am always glad when I'm done with them for the circle, if I have to be forced into timegates even more and can't just divide my time on them how I see fit- I'd likely not do it anymore and buy more MC instead of generating them for myself 😉 )

For every normal player it is never nor has it ever been a good idea to sell MC in general, cause at some point they needed to rebuy them. Even less need to sell with WV because that one generates gold more than the old system ever did.

Edited January 17 by Minna.7895
@

[Danikat.8537]

6 minutes ago, Minna.7895 said:

For every normal player it is never nor has it ever been a good idea to sell MC in general, cause at some point they needed to rebuy them. Even less need to sell with WV because that one generates gold more than the old system ever did.

I sort-of disagree with this. I agree that players should think carefully before selling MC (or any valuable item) but I've sold them on several occasions and can't remember ever having to buy them.

A big part of the reason for that is I've 'only' made 6 legendary items in over 11 years of playing and always been put off making most of the other things which need them because of the cost of other materials. (Although I did make the Triforce Pendant.) When I do make a legendary it takes me a long time and I'm usually thinking about it for a while before I start so I have time to save up Mystic Coins.

I know I'm probably an anomaly among players on the forum where the assumption seems to be everyone has or is aiming for full legendary equipment ASAP, but I suspect most average players are in a similar position and actually capable of getting more Mystic Coins than they're going to use.

[kharmin.7683]

I don't intend to ever make and legendary anything, so I save up my MC and sell them when the price is favorable.  /shrug

[Astralporing.1957]

44 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I know I'm probably an anomaly among players on the forum where the assumption seems to be everyone has or is aiming for full legendary equipment ASAP, but I suspect most average players are in a similar position and actually capable of getting more Mystic Coins than they're going to use.

Most "average" players do not usually farm and sell mats. They just accrue them passively through their normal play, and sell those that overflow their material storage. I bet many players that were selling their overflow MCs in the old system do not even buy them from vault, and in vault shop they go straight to gold purchase (after buying the skins they might be interested in, if any). That might have made them have enough for normal use under the old system, but in the new one it will be different.

[Minna.7895]

10 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Most "average" players do not usually farm and sell mats. They just accrue them passively through their normal play, and sell those that overflow their material storage. I bet many players that were selling their overflow MCs in the old system do not even buy them from vault, and in vault shop they go straight to gold purchase (after buying the skins they might be interested in, if any). That might have made them have enough for normal use under the old system, but in the new one it will be different.

Yep, agreed and also if they are not going for legendarys they might be more interested in buying the ascended weapons and armor with their wizardcoins instead of stuff to sell on the TP. Plus more casual players (timewise casual is what I'm referring to) that got them passively in the old system might not even get enough wizardcoins to have leftovers after they got everything they are interested in.

On top of all that, many just don't care about gold much (why would they if not interested in the expensive Legendarys or Infusions or other skins that are expensive because they require MC like mystic weapons, Nightfury or the ones that look like guardian/mesmer weapons).

[Bollocks.4078]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Most "average" players do not usually farm and sell mats. They just accrue them passively through their normal play, and sell those that overflow their material storage. I bet many players that were selling their overflow MCs in the old system do not even buy them from vault, and in vault shop they go straight to gold purchase (after buying the skins they might be interested in, if any). That might have made them have enough for normal use under the old system, but in the new one it will be different.

I disagree with the part about average players not buying MCs and selling them on the TP.  I think any player who doesn't need MCs but does want more gold and has half a brain will buy MCs for 9aa and sell them on the TP.  Right now, even insta-selling MCs would give more gold/AA than the 1G bags for 6AA.  

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Bollocks.4078 said:

I disagree with the part about average players not buying MCs and selling them on the TP.  I think any player who doesn't need MCs but does want more gold and has half a brain will buy MCs for 9aa and sell them on the TP.  Right now, even insta-selling MCs would give more gold/AA than the 1G bags for 6AA.  

You are talking about players that actually pay attention to the market. Remember, for example, that most players still use direct buy/sell options instead of putting up sell/buy orders of their own, and do that even if they are not under time pressure and not need the transaction to be instant. This is a similar case - an average player in need of gold will go for gold option directly, without bothering to check if buying mats and selling them might not give them a better return. The amount of players that actually pay attention to it is relatively small compared to the whole game population.

Hint: it is like with good builds - it does not require a lot of effort to check what build might be good for a player, so in theory "anyone with half a brain" should be able to complete a decent build even when lacking gear, and yet most of the community still does 4k dps on average. And it has nothing to do with being smart or stupid - some players just play this game differently than others.

[Bollocks.4078]

15 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You are talking about players that actually pay attention to the market. Remember, for example, that most players still use direct buy/sell options instead of putting up sell/buy orders of their own, and do that even if they are not under time pressure and not need the transaction to be instant. This is a similar case - an average player in need of gold will go for gold option directly, without bothering to check if buying mats and selling them might not give them a better return. The amount of players that actually pay attention to it is relatively small compared to the whole game population.

Hint: it is like with good builds - it does not require a lot of effort to check what build might be good for a player, so in theory "anyone with half a brain" should be able to complete a decent build even when lacking gear, and yet most of the community still does 4k dps on average. And it has nothing to do with being smart or stupid - some players just play this game differently than others.

How exactly do you know all this?  How do you know how much DPS the average player does?  How do you know the buying and selling habits of most players?  I have no idea where to find this information.

[vares.8457]

8 minutes ago, Bollocks.4078 said:

How exactly do you know all this?

He doesn’t. It’s always his personal opinion presented as fact. 

[Cernoch.8524]

14 minutes ago, Bollocks.4078 said:

How exactly do you know all this?  How do you know how much DPS the average player does?  How do you know the buying and selling habits of most players?  I have no idea where to find this information.

For DPS, joining groups with arc dps...its easy to see average dps of players. Just as it is easy to see how many items was directly bought/sold or ordered. Not a rocket science to find out. 

Edited January 17 by Cernoch.8524

[Shuzuru.3651]

15 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You are talking about players that actually pay attention to the market. Remember, for example, that most players still use direct buy/sell options instead of putting up sell/buy orders of their own, and do that even if they are not under time pressure and not need the transaction to be instant.

Both behavior aren't self exclusive, you can look at the market closely but not be willing to risk to list and not sell. And for buy order, more than once i happened to actually buy for more than buying directly as the price raised and your buy orders are burried under thousand of orders.

[ArchonWing.9480]

The devs said so in the past that there's a massive gap in dps between the average and hardcore players (10x):

https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/difficulty

That was a few years ago, but that really hasn't changed and it can also be easily determined with Arcdps and the like. A lot of the times in a large squad, you may see a few people dealing 80% of the damage

As for the TP, I'm pretty sure you could track what gets sold and how the prices change though never paid much attention to that. I do sell at the worse price if the prices are around the same or if it's a low value item. Like I really don't care about the extra 2c per mithril.

Like even for mystic coins, the prices are pretty close even though yes, I would do the sell price. But how much would you really lose for selling them instantly? It's not like most people have a ton lying around.

Plus for very expensive items those buy prices are incredibly made up and don't really sell at those prices often.

Also for us long time players that have finished gearing in ascended+, gold has very limited use outside of maybe ascended food and random gem store skins. So a few hundred gold either way means nothing. Like yes, there's a big differnce between someone with 100 gold and 1000 gold maybe, but much less so with someone and 1000 gold and 10000 gold. Game has no gear treadmill, why stress over play money?

Edited January 17 by ArchonWing.9480

[Schimmi.6872]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You are talking about players that actually pay attention to the market. Remember, for example, that most players still use direct buy/sell options instead of putting up sell/buy orders of their own, and do that even if they are not under time pressure and not need the transaction to be instant. This is a similar case - an average player in need of gold will go for gold option directly, without bothering to check if buying mats and selling them might not give them a better return. The amount of players that actually pay attention to it is relatively small compared to the whole game population.

Hint: it is like with good builds - it does not require a lot of effort to check what build might be good for a player, so in theory "anyone with half a brain" should be able to complete a decent build even when lacking gear, and yet most of the community still does 4k dps on average. And it has nothing to do with being smart or stupid - some players just play this game differently than others.

Where do you get this stas from, because the graphs like on gw2bltc seem to tell a different story? For MCs the difference between fullfilled /removed sell and buy offers was close and in the last months it looks like more people switched to sell offers. For other items like ectos the difference is even more in favor of sell orders. So at least for me this doesn't look like most players are using the instant sell option?

I know that this numbers don't show the complete truth as removed orders also count, but because of that I guess that the stats would be even more in favor of sell orders, as removing buy orders doesn't cost fees.

[Sobx.1758]

7 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Most "average" players do not usually farm and sell mats. They just accrue them passively through their normal play, and sell those that overflow their material storage. I bet many players that were selling their overflow MCs in the old system do not even buy them from vault, and in vault shop they go straight to gold purchase (after buying the skins they might be interested in, if any). That might have made them have enough for normal use under the old system, but in the new one it will be different.

So do those -made up- "average players" never filled the MC material storage? Or do they sell overflow but don't see they're getting substantial gold for selling them so now they totally can't remember that selling MC = easy gold? 🤔

Edited January 17 by Sobx.1758

[ArchonWing.9480]

Average players will do whatever is convenient for the writer.

[Ashen.2907]

In terms of the ten times the damage mentioned in that article, I think (purely anecdotal I admit) that power creep over the years since the article was published has raised the floor more than the ceiling on damage output. So many more LI (or no intensity) builds that can do 10k+ without group buffs. Sure the top end has gone up but not as much as the bottom. I would estimate more like a 7 - 8 times discrepancy now..

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Schimmi.6872 said:

Where do you get this stas from, because the graphs like on gw2bltc seem to tell a different story? For MCs the difference between fullfilled /removed sell and buy offers was close and in the last months it looks like more people switched to sell offers. For other items like ectos the difference is even more in favor of sell orders. So at least for me this doesn't look like most players are using the instant sell option?

Remember, that trade sites cannot track actual transactions, because those are not on the API. What they track is individual orders, but only the non-instant ones. Instant transactions can be viewed only indirectly, by tracking sell/buy orders that are disappearing. As such, for this you do not compare buy/sell offers from graph to each other, because the do not fulfill each other. Instead, each of those orders (both buy and sell) gets fulfilled by an instant transaction that by itself is not on graph. If you want to see how many players use instant transactions you need to add those together.

[Pinkeh.4207]

Legos feel more expensive after SOTO

Edited January 17 by Pinkeh.4207

[Zephire.8049]

11 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

The price was rising relatively steadily from about November 2014, dropped significantly in mid 2021 but was rising again before the WV or SotO was even announced. I think what's more likely than this all being due to the WV is something happened back in 2021 which caused the price to drop (in spite of rising demand) but then it started to recover and has now returned to it's previous levels.

I'm not sure what caused that though. My best guess is EoD legendaries not requiring as many Mystic Coins, followed by speculation that SotO ones (specifically the new armour) will do, but I don't know. Especially since the demand actually increased when the price was dropping and increased again when it started going up.

The small 2021 drop was because that's when the guy who built the MC buy order wall was banned so prices could finally drop. The 2022 drop coincides with when they made MC available via strikes and raid vendors and change their availability from fractals to be from Nightmare, Shattered, and Sunqua to be from a vendor.

But I think it's concerning that the current prices are about on par with the price they were when a guy was intentionally manipulating MC prices. Supply and demand have decoupled and it's taken only a year to reach their historical price height when originally that took 5 years (8 if you count the first three years when it was practically a flat line).

[Yaki.9563]

Imagine the outcry from higher T6 mat costs if they actually banned afk farmers and bots!

[kiroho.4738]

On 1/16/2024 at 4:59 PM, Cernoch.8524 said:

it will just go down again with new season

+

On 1/16/2024 at 5:07 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

It's returning to its old levels.

It will not. The new season doesn't change anything about the price, it keeps raising.

 

On 1/16/2024 at 5:51 PM, Cernoch.8524 said:

But price was pretty stable during season 1 and half of season 2

Not at all.

Since mid of September the price is rising non stop.
It started rising even faster since season 2 release.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/19976-mystic-coin

 

15 hours ago, Minna.7895 said:

MC used to be around 3 gold if i remember correctly until they dropped with EOD

Nope, MCs never reached 3g.
Top price was 2.71g in may 2021.

 

21 hours ago, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

All those people who decided to craft and sell legendary from starter kit spend like ~154 coins per legy crafting to get clovers...

They get from wizard vault:

1) 60 mc per season

2) 20 clover per season

They need 54 extra coins per season to craft legy

You forget that even with the starter kit only a small amount of players craft a legendary.
Most players just sell or keep their Mystic Coins.

 

 

[Lucy.3728]

On 1/16/2024 at 5:18 PM, mythix.2786 said:

Don’t be naive. People with multiple accounts already capped on everything valuable this season on the vault.

And yet they raised, so much about the dangers of multiple accounts.