TP Gold to Gem Exchange is not linear?

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

So I never exchanged gold to gems before, and wanted to a little while ago, but I noticed something weird. The exchange rate jumps a lot (and not the change every couple of minutes or so based on trade volumes) depending on what you put in. I tried putting in 1-2-3-4-5 gems just to see what the price per gem was but the jumps are all over the place.So then I tried 100 gems and compared it with 10. One would expect 10 gems would cost 1/10th of 100 gems. But 100 gems would cost me 40.52.17 while 10 gems are 4.28.28. Now if you x10 that, you'd get 42.82.80. These rates aren't as crazy as I have found some cases, but it's still super weird and I'm confused. If it's not a per-gem price, what are these prices based on? And at what amounts is the exchange rate best?

Please help because I have no clue how this works.

[Aaralyna.3104]

Given there is a tax rate on trading post it may also be on gold to gems to explain the difference.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@Aaralyna.3104 said:Given there is a tax rate on trading post it may also be on gold to gems to explain the difference.

There is, but that in no way explains a difference. 15% is 15%. It doesn't change per transaction, so it doesn't explain the non-linear prices.

If I take 10% of everything you sell and you sell 10 icecreams for 1 Euro each, I'll take 10 cents 10 times = 1 Euro.If you then decide you might as well sell icecreams per 10 for 10 Euros, I'm still taking 10% = 1 Euro.There is no difference.

[ugrakarma.9416]

yes its weird

gems to gold400gem ~150gold (x2,6)800gem ~300gold (x2,6)1200gem~460gold(x2,6)the rate dont change with amount of gold bought.

gold to gem, more u bought, more the multiplier drop.1gold ~ 5gem (x5)10gold ~ 40gem (x4)50gold ~ 190gem (x3,8)

[Fang Wolfika.6820]

If I remember correctly, it's based on supply and demand. So imagine you have a box for gems. If you purchase gems with IRL money, you are creating gems to spend, which then fills the gem box. But if you purchase gems with gold, then you are directly buying out of the gem box, which makes its supply fluctuate. Due to this fluctuation of this supply, the price will then change to reflect the supply but also be based on the current demand at the time of the exchange. So if there is nothing new in the gem store, the demand usually won't be as high as most veterans already got what they want from the gem store. But the price does sometimes spike up when there is a brand new item in the store.

When the vanilla game first launch, the gold to gem exchange was very low as you got a few pieces of gold for the max amount of gems. So as more gold and gems enter the economy of the game and with the introduction of new items has caused the exchange to fluctuate and inflate in prices. So think of it as the TP in the game, it's based on supply and demand. So if the supply is there but there is little demand for items on the gem store, the prices will dip a bit and if there is a demand for items on the gem store then the supply of the gem box will lower which then causes prices to rise. Even if it is in small increments. Now I may be wrong on this but it is how I always looked at it. Hopefully, this helps with understanding it.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@Fang Wolfika.6820 said:If I remember correctly, it's based on supply and demand. So imagine you have a box for gems. If you purchase gems with IRL money, you are creating gems to spend, which then fills the gem box. But if you purchase gems with gold, then you are directly buying out of the gem box, which makes its supply fluctuate. Due to this fluctuation of this supply, the price will then change to reflect the supply but also be based on the current demand at the time of the exchange. So if there is nothing new in the gem store, the demand usually won't be as high as most veterans already got what they want from the gem store. But the price does sometimes spike up when there is a brand new item in the store.

When the vanilla game first launch, the gold to gem exchange was very low as you got a few pieces of gold for the max amount of gems. So as more gold and gems enter the economy of the game and with the introduction of new items has caused the exchange to fluctuate and inflate in prices. So think of it as the TP in the game, it's based on supply and demand. So if the supply is there but there is little demand for items on the gem store, the prices will dip a bit and if there is a demand for items on the gem store then the supply of the gem box will lower which then causes prices to rise. Even if it is in small increments. Now I may be wrong on this but it is how I always looked at it. Hopefully, this helps with understanding it.

Like I said, this isn't the supply and demand price fluctuation. Supply and demand doesn't explain why gems are priced differently based on how many you buy at once at the same time.

If it was purely supply/demand based, the price would be a set price and it wouldn't matter if you bought say 400 or 4000 gems at once as long as you buy them at the exact same market situation. But it does. And what I'm trying to figure out is why.

[Danikat.8537]

You do need to check each price several times to compare it exactly however, because those price fluctuations are happening constatly so potentially every time you put a different amount into the menu the exchange rate will change from the one used for your previous amount. Especially if you do it at a busy time of the day, like during peak activity hours or just after the gem store sales have been updated and new items are available. (Sometimes if you put an amount in and then wait a few seconds before clicking the button to do it the transaction will be rejected because the price has changed.)

For example I've just tried checking the price for 1 gem, 10 gems and 100 gems 5 times each, always doing 1 then 10 then 100 then back to 1 and I got slightly different prices each time. However there does also seem to be a slight 'discount' on the larger amounts.

The prices I got are:

1G 10G 100G0.96.24 4.17.02 39.45.610.9624 4.18.55 39.60.070.96.61 4.18.49 39.52.460.96.11 4.17.74 39.52.460.96.56 4.18.75 39.61.95

Fortunately I was able to do this at a relatively quite time (1pm BST, 5am PDT so when most of Europe is at work and most of America is asleep) so there wasn't a lot of activity in the exchange and the exchange rates were staying relatively stable (when I tried earlier in the day I was getting changes of more than 1g for the 10 gem and 100g amounts). I suspect if I waited a few hours and did it just after the daily update to the March sale the prices would be all over the place.

But even so it's clear the exchange rate isn't linear. The price for 1 gem is around 0.96.30 so 10 gems should be 9.63.00 and 100 gem 96.30.00 but instead it's just under 1/2 that (with a slightly smaller reduction in price between the 10 gem and 100 gem amounts).

My first guess is they did this to encourage players to exchange larger amounts, rather than just getting exactly what they need right now. But if that's the case they haven't done a very good job advertising it because I doubt most players are aware. Given the amounts shown side by side on the first screen are all for larger amounts of gems it doesn't show as much variation.

My second guess is that it's some sort of safeguard put in to stop the prices for large amounts of gems getting too insane and putting players off exchanging them. But I don't know if they'd do that or trust supply and demand to fix it (if the price to buy gems with gold got too high then the price to buy gold with gems would be very cheap and more people would do it).

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

So I noted some conversions down and made some graphs.Some general observations:

• Gems are incredibly more pricey in small amounts.
• Gems mostly get cheaper the more you buy of them, but this decrease in costs does slow down, and it isn't smooth. There's bumps of seemingly random increases before it goes back down again at certain values and I haven't found the logic in this yet.

Here's a link to some data observations and graphs.That's what I (with some feedback from other players) have been able to figure out about it so far. If you have any insight into how or why this works this way, let me know.Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@Danikat.8537 said:You do need to check each price several times to compare it exactly however, because those price fluctuations are happening constatly so potentially every time you put a different amount into the menu the exchange rate will change from the one used for your previous amount. Especially if you do it at a busy time of the day, like during peak activity hours or just after the gem store sales have been updated and new items are available. (Sometimes if you put an amount in and then wait a few seconds before clicking the button to do it the transaction will be rejected because the price has changed.)

Fortunately I was able to do this at a relatively quite time (1pm BST, 5am PDT so when most of Europe is at work and most of America is asleep) so there wasn't a lot of activity in the exchange and the exchange rates were staying relatively stable (when I tried earlier in the day I was getting changes of more than 1g for the 10 gem and 100g amounts). I suspect if I waited a few hours and did it just after the daily update to the March sale the prices would be all over the place.

But even so it's clear the exchange rate isn't linear. The price for 1 gem is around 0.96.30 so 10 gems should be 9.63.00 and 100 gem 96.30.00 but instead it's just under 1/2 that (with a slightly smaller reduction in price between the 10 gem and 100 gem amounts).

Yeah exactly. But even if those changed during the data sets I took (I usually use a control check afterwards to see if this happened) that change should still be linear from there on out. It doesn't explain spikes all over the place with every check (and at the same exchange rate, because you can just go back between the two fast and check if it's still the same). One of the more interesting data points I've got from the last try is:Gems - Total Cost in Copper - Per Gem Cost in Copper400 1539932 3849.83500 1926499 3852.998600 2309898 3849.83

It's super fascinating that it changes for 500 but gets back to exactly the same per gem cost for 600 compared to 400 (no where else in the data set with increments of 100 did it do this). I haven't checked yet if this is the case more often.

[ugrakarma.9416]

theres some supply/demand factor, .for example.1gold ~ 5gem (x5)10gold ~ 40gem (x4)

we can think, that bought 10x at 1g~5gem will gain 50gem, instead of 40gem buying at 10gold in a single transaction, but probably the prices got adjusted at each transaction, so making 10 transactions will climb price anyway, them at end u will bought 10gold~40gem anyway.

the actual system in really favours "honest player" and disincourage speculation.

[anninke.7469]

I might be completely wrong but can't the price change when you buy gems from several batches that were sold for different amounts of gold? (I hope it makes sense...)

[Luthan.5236]

Maybe it is diminishing returns lol. Or some other complicated formula. In the end I guess they want players to buy gems with real money. And they want to take away gold from the system/economy. So it makes sense to have higher hidden fees for gold -> gems conversion.

If there was some base fee (flat amount) it actually should give better conversion rates for trading more. But someone above ( ugrakarma.9416 ) mentioned he got less (worse rate) gems per gold when trying to trade in a higher amount of gold. This is a bit unexpected.

The thing Danikat tried ... seems stable (tried a few times to check for rate fluctuation) and it makes more sense. There it actually is a better rate (more gems per gold) for the higher amount of gems (that cost less gold per gem then).

Especially since the jump seems big for a low amount ... could mean there is some base fee (flat amount) which starts to have less meaning when trading a higher amount.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@anninke.7469 said:I might be completely wrong but can't the price change when you buy gems from several batches that were sold for different amounts of gold? (I hope it makes sense...)

No. Because these were just price checks. Nothing actually was bought, and there was no price increase or decrease between them (that only happens after a bunch of seconds).

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:theres some supply/demand factor, .for example.1gold ~ 5gem (x5)10gold ~ 40gem (x4)

we can think, that bought 10x at 1g~5gem will gain 50gem, instead of 40gem buying at 10gold in a single transaction, but probably the prices got adjusted at each transaction, so making 10 transactions will climb price anyway, them at end u will bought 10gold~40gem anyway.

the actual system in really favours "honest player" and disincourage speculation.

Nothing was actually bought, as stated already a couple times. So this doesn't apply.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@Luthan.5236 said:Maybe it is diminishing returns lol. Or some other complicated formula. In the end I guess they want players to buy gems with real money. And they want to take away gold from the system/economy. So it makes sense to have higher hidden fees for gold -> gems conversion.

If there was some base fee (flat amount) it actually should give better conversion rates for trading more. But someone above ( ugrakarma.9416 ) mentioned he got less (worse rate) gems per gold when trying to trade in a higher amount of gold. This is a bit unexpected.

The thing Danikat tried ... seems stable (tried a few times to check for rate fluctuation) and it makes more sense. There it actually is a better rate (more gems per gold) for the higher amount of gems (that cost less gold per gem then).

Especially since the jump seems big for a low amount ... could mean there is some base fee (flat amount) which starts to have less meaning when trading a higher amount.

It's not just a base fee. If it were, the line of cost-per-gem would be a flat line going down the more you buy. But it isn't. It has ups and downs at different values.

Also, Ugrakarma isn't really understanding any of this. Nothing they said makes any sense, for as much as I could read what they meant.

[anninke.7469]

@Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

@anninke.7469 said:I might be completely wrong but can't the price change when you buy gems from several batches that were sold for different amounts of gold? (I hope it makes sense...)

No. Because these were just price checks. Nothing actually was bought, and there was no price increase or decrease between them (that only happens after a bunch of seconds).

What I mean is if the price of gems can behave similarly to TP trades. When you buy, let's say, 20 spiritwood planks there can be various offers. You can find all 20 for 5g each. Or there can be 10 planks/6g and 10 planks/5,5g. Or any other combination of available offers. So I wonder if something similar might affect the price of gems.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@anninke.7469 said:

@Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

@anninke.7469 said:I might be completely wrong but can't the price change when you buy gems from several batches that were sold for different amounts of gold? (I hope it makes sense...)

No. Because these were just price checks. Nothing actually was bought, and there was no price increase or decrease between them (that only happens after a bunch of seconds).

What I mean is if the price of gems can behave similarly to TP trades. When you buy, let's say, 20 spiritwood planks there can be various offers. You can find all 20 for 5g each. Or there can be 10 planks/6g and 10 planks/5,5g. Or any other combination of available offers. So I wonder if something similar might affect the price of gems.

Would be weird though because you don't 'list' your gems at a rate, it's a set rate, that is automated, and updated a couple times per minute based on supply-demand of both.

[Luthan.5236]

I have found the google spreadsheed in one of the previous posts. The early big decrease in cost per gems ... could hint a flat/base fee per transaction you do. The later slight increases actually could mean: Game adjusts the exchange rate almost real time and also takes into account the amount you buy.

{Edit: Here I mean: Even if you are not buying it takes into account that you want to buy a higher amount ... noticing a higher demand - when putting a offer for buying more gems. Using a different rate. As if you bought not 1000 gems at once but 1, then rate adjustment, buying the next one, rate adjustment, etc. ...}

If you offer more gold - when trying to buy more gems - the demand for gems increases ... making them more expensive. It does not explain the weird small ups and downs in between. (After the initial big decrease you'd expect slight increases only.) But other players affecting the market (if it really is calculated almost real time and bigger exchanges have a bigger effect) ... might play a role here - affecting the data gathered.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Prophet of Flames.2783 said:Like I said, this isn't the supply and demand price fluctuation. Supply and demand doesn't explain why gems are priced differently based on how many you buy at once at the same time.According to what the devs said somewhere in the past, it does not set the uniform gem price for the whole transaction, but instead keeps buying the gems in the background until it hits the number - and it keeps reevaluating the price during that. It's to prevent players from doing stuff like buying an absurd number of gems for gold at lower price in order to elevate the price high enough they will then be able to sell those gems back (at a newer, much higher price) with profit. It's not going to work like that, because with the system we have now, buying them at once and buying them in multiple small amounts is going to cost you about the same anyway.

Imagine gems to be a commodity on TP, and you buying them as using the buy immediately option. You buy out the lowest priced gems first, but they run out and you start to go higher and higher the more you buy. It's obviously not exactly the case (as individual gems are notdifferently priced), but works well to illustrate the situation.

So, in reality, you are not buying a certain number of gems at the same time. You, in a way, buy each gem separately, one after another. And that's why the price may end up not being linear.

And you can add to that the effect of rounding the actual, internal price, which is more visible with low numbers (and is always in Anet's favour). In your case it seems to be actually more the effect of this than of what i mentioned earlier.

And yes, this all works for just price checks, because the system has to precalculate all this beforehand - it can't just show one price, and then take from you a different one after all.

@Luthan.5236 said:The later slight increases actually could mean: Game adjusts the exchange rate almost real time and also takes into account the amount you buy.According to what we've heard long ago from devs, it's exactly how it works.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Prophet of Flames.2783 said:Like I said, this isn't the supply and demand price fluctuation. Supply and demand doesn't explain why gems are priced differently based on how many you buy at once

at the same time

.According to what the devs said somewhere in the past, it does

not

set the uniform gem price for the whole transaction, but instead keeps buying the gems in the background until it hits the number - and it keeps reevaluating the price during that. It's to prevent players from doing stuff like buying an absurd number of gems for gold at lower price in order to elevate the price high enough they will then be able to sell those gems back (at a newer, much higher price) with profit. It's not going to work like that, because with the system we have now, buying them at once and buying them in multiple small amounts is going to cost you about the same anyway.

That is actually interesting if it would work that way. However, the data doesn't seem to suggest that. If it would re-evaluate the price and change it based on that increased demand, prices would go up the more you buy in one go. But they don't, they go down, most of the time. But that line isn't straight, so going from 400 to 500 increases the price per gem, but going from 400 to 600 brings it down again. Also, buying in multiple small amounts is incredibly much more expensive than buying more in one go, which was the exact reason I started looking into this. So your last line here just isn't true at all. You can try it yourself, buy 10x10 gems as opposed to 100 gems in one go, the 10 gems is gonna end you up spending over what you would normally pay for one batch of 200.

Imagine gems to be a commodity on TP, and you buying them as using the buy immediately option. You buy out the lowest priced gems first, but they run out and you start to go higher and higher the more you buy. It's obviously not exactly the case (as individual gems are notdifferently priced), but works well to illustrate the situation.

It notably doesn't work like that at all, for exactly the reason you already give yourself ;). And the fact that cost per gem goes down on average the more you buy.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Prophet of Flames.2783 said:It notably doesn't work like that at all, for exactly the reason you already give yourself ;). And the fact that cost per gem goes down on average the more you buy.I already addressed that in that same post.I'll quote the relevant part back to you:And you can add to that the effect of rounding the actual, internal price, which is more visible with low numbers (and is always in Anet's favour). In your case it seems to be actually more the effect of this than of what i mentioned earlier.So, in your case it seems to be more an effect of rounding boundaries, that affect the price the most on low values

But in general, the system does work as i have described. We've had multiple statements from devs in the early years of the game explaining what happens under the hood, so i am not actually gussing, but repeating what i heard then.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

There is simply no way the difference (especially with really low values) is down to rounding differences. Those are just too small. Did you look at the data? It just doesn't get explained by that. Rounding differences don't account for 100's or even over a 1000 copper in price/gem difference.

And if it's just rounding differences, it makes 0 sense that overal the more you buy at once, the lower the price per gem trend is in general. Rounding differences can't show a trend, especially at larger values. On top of that, your claim that if you buy more, you'd buy at a higher price for part of that because you're taking gems out of the market so it accounts for that increase in demand (and as such price) in the one purchase, is completely counter to the actual data we're getting. It just makes no sense.

I respect that you make that claim based on what you've heard from devs a long time ago, but the data just isn't supporting it in the least. If the devs tell you it isn't raining, but you're getting wet when you go outside, I guess it's time to re-evaluate that position.

[Khisanth.2948]

Rates from two samples taken 11 minutes apart. Where exactly are the huge differences in rate?

gold to gem2000 6718542 3359.271 copper per gem1200 4036108 3363.42333~ copper per gem800 2687967 3359.95875 copper per gem400 1345368 3363.42 copper per gem

gem to gold2500000 1097 0.0004388 gem per copper1000000 439 0.000439 gem per copper500000 220 0.00044 gem per copper100000 45 0.00045 gem per copper10000 5 0.0005 gem per copper

gold to gem2000 6812454 3406.2271200 4091404 3409.50333~800 2726667 3408.33375400 1364738 3411.845

gem to gold2500000 1080 0.0004321000000 433 0.000433500000 217 0.000434100000 44 0.0004410000 5 0.0005

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

Gems Total cost in Copper Cost per Gem1 9569 95692 12749 6374.53 15936 53124 19123 4780.755 25498 5099.66 28685 4780.8333337 31872 4553.1428578 35059 4382.3759 38246 4249.55555610 41434 4143.4

Gems Total cost in Copper Cost per Gem100 389736 3897.36200 773135 3865.675300 1156533 3855.11400 1539932 3849.83500 1926499 3852.998600 2309898 3849.83700 2690652 3843.788571800 3075930 3844.9125900 3459234 3843.5933331000 3848344 3848.344

As you can see, those differences are hug with a low amount of gems, as pointed out above.But even when getting to the higher amounts (the only data you took, which isn't as volatile, as already stated) the price does fluctuate within the same market period, so that's strange, and that's what I'm trying to figure out. Even your data shows this. The price per gem should even out if it was just market based.

[Khisanth.2948]

You get different rates even for the same amount being converted...Rate changes as trades occur. Which as stated by other people is completely expected.