Does the Armbrace market matter, really?

It's 2 weeks until GW:EN, and with the subtle graphics power creep introduced with expansions, the weapon graphics in GW:EN will likely blow the Tormented weapons away.

Plus, Tormented weapons can't be used with the Hall of Monuments.

The only big deal I see, besides the whole philosophical quandries and the existance of a dupe glitch, is people who invested Ectos into Armbraces and mostly lost their money. How rampant is that?

"graphics power creep"?

wtf?

Lol @ rich people.

What I meant is tha the graphics generally become better with each expansion...

well sad for the people that actually paid for ambrace fairly (not the greedy one's that bought 1750 ambraces, they deserve to burn in...), but it's in the past, and you got to move on. Heck they have two weeks, make the most out of it.

Unless you're getting free runes and insignias, no it doesn't matter.

I'm not sure the real damage is the armbrace market - they just got greedy and were caught because of armbraces.

This exploits, it seems, has been possible since December. I would strongly suspect they tried it first on ectos, black dye and rare materials. These are stackable items and would have been the most efficient to duplicate. This would explain the rapid drop in ecto prices. And this would have had a tremendous effect on the market. It would have driven prices on things people were farming for their "living expenses" way down (look at the impact ecto price has had on FoW and UW farmers - their income has been cut way back)

Meanwhile it gave the dupers unlimited cash to buy the high end items - keeping the price on those things very high.

Meanwhile ANet, responding to the wrong problem, continued to nerf farming locations (apparently assuming the cause of the problem was legitimate farmers who were actually working for their cash - and bots, I suppose)

So the average player/farmer's income was slashed even while dupers were literally printing cash.

In the end, I think they got stupid. With ectos worth only about 3.9k at the trader on many days, they decided to dupe something more expensive - armbraces. Or maybe one of the dupers finally got a character through DoA and got himself an armbrace for the first time. That was too big a move - people noticed and they got caught.

This is speculation of course but I can't imagine an exploit like that being available for more than a week or two before some hot shot teen hacker discovered it and I think it has been affecting the economy for the last 8 months.

Heck, it may have even caused ANet to implement loot scaling itself (I think that was implemented at least 3 or 4 months after the exploit became available) thinking that the high prices on many items were the fault of farmers when they were, in fact, the fault of dupers.

In any case, I don't think the armbracers were or are the problem. I think the months of duping before the armbracers was the real problem and has had a much greater impact on the economy.

They might be technically better, but not necesarily more desired or prettier or cooler.

People still craft prohecies armor for looks and some people still swear by Long Sword skin.

OFC, farming rush is something else, people will go farm new stuff because anyone wating to get old skins already got them or cant afford them, ever, so money are to be made with new things.

wonder how pimped the dupers heros are xD

A lot of money gets moved to things that were created outside the normal economy. It devalues those items and people automatically lose on their investment and it devalues the economy at the same time.

And indeed there are people who earned those things and to them and if things like this happen more often it can take the fun out of playing the game, meaning that people will stop playing.
Achievements should not be destroyed so easily or people stop wanting to achieve things in game in other words and thus will go somewhere where this doesn't happen, ie another game.

If exploits like this were to happen more often it could destroy the game. That seems like reason enough to care about it.

Investment?!

Items such as armbraces should never be seen as an investment, their price will always drop. Smart people know this, the rest get what they deserve.

While duping did destroy diablo 2, I think Guild Wars is a little more resilient to it. Character advancement in Guild Wars isn't heavily based on leetsauce items. Yes, a lot of players play for the farming and cool items, but a game exista outside of that. We have missions, vanquishing, titles, quests, and all manner of stuff that still remains reasonably fun if the economy breaks. In Diablo 2, pretty much the entire point of the game was getting a pimped out character with uber-powerful weapons. Breaking that broke the entire character progression model in that game.

The duping in Guild Wars certainly did screw up the market on a few high-end items, especially armbraces. At best, that ruins some of the farming in DOA. That certainly sucks, and it sucks to be one of the collectors who got screwed here, but it's hardly the end of the game. In fact, I'd bet 90% of players will barely notice.

I call it an investment because it requires a lot of resources to get it, not in the sense that you want to make money with it later.

And this single event will not destroy the game but if they do not act swiftly and brutally as they have when something like this happens, people will get the chance to ruin the game id this sort of thing were to become more common, that's all I am saying.

I doubt that Malice. The demand for tormented weapons will remain high until GW:EN comes out (in which case, new "uber" weapon skins will replace the demand for them). Techincially, they were still a good investment for short turn over. I mean, if you expected your armbrace to be worth more 5 years from now or something, that's stupid. But yes the armbrace could have been sold for slightly more in the course of 4-6 months. Not anymore due to dupeing of course.

No. Reason why..because as more and more people farm gems, the lower the price will be. Armbraces were always doomed in the long run. Nothing that is farmable is worth "investing" in.

I hope this is on topic. I think that more of the market was affected than people realized, and I'm pretty sure it was last minute stuff. About a week ago I got a sup derv rune and merched it for 500g. I got the same rune Sunday night and went to merch it around an hour before the update/ban. It was selling for 100g. I did not bother salvaging to see how much I could sell it for. If I had to guess, because posts came out describing the dupe trick, people took their most valuable items and tried it and drove down the prices of a lot of things at traders. I was dissappointed when I saw the devalue, and was surprised at how fast it devalued, but I did not suspect anything until I saw everything on the forum Monday. I've seen in other threads that this was not limitted to AoT. Does anyone know how widespread it became in its final moments? My rare materials stil held their value, but I haven't checked common materials. A lot of runes seem to have devalued, but others did not. Not being anywhere close to a high-end trader, I had never heard of an AoT before this fiasco. The AoT market means nothing to me. I make my gold in salvaging runes and rare materials. If those markets were damaged, then I would be in trouble. Any more info on how they are holding up?

QFT. The only reason to ever buy an AoT is if you want a Tormented item or if you can flip it immediately for a profit. Holding on to them is just a pip of degen on your wealth.

QFT. Most casual players did NOT notice.

When I logged in last night, somebody asked why the reconnect feature was disabled. That was the main worry, not that there were some duped items running around.

I know I've never even entered the DoA, much less gotten any Armbraces or traded anything for them.

Maybe someone is going to buy up mass AoT and Tormented weapons and delete them. That's the only way to raise their worth.

Since GWEN is the last expansion untill GW2 (or so they made me think), I guess they will put best weapons in it, to give people something to work for, till GW2 is here. So yeah, Tormented weapons will certanly fall in price and demand, but I asume they will still be 1337. But not "teh pwn" anymore.

[QUOTE]400 gold drop is literally nothing as i have seen it at 100 before

do you think they are going to dupe a few hundred gold rune when they could have just as well duped a 15 K SUPERIOR VIGOR INSTEAD?

no way

The amount that would have to be bought and then deleted would be in the many thousands. I doubt anyone has the guts for that in this game tbh too much of a carebear mentality now.

I guess seeing is believing, and we'll all find out 2 weeks from now

Bummer, I was hoping to store a tormented sword and shield for GW2. Where did you get the above info?

Does it matter to the vast majority that 10 armbraces are now 1 million instead of x million? Not one bit.

Except for a tiny super rich minority this unfortunate duping episode has had no real impact on the GW players overall, the worst impact its had is the suspension of reconnects.

Whether or not the weapons in EN will be better isnt even relevant, even the ugliest stuff will spike sky high in price for the first couple of weeks and then level off again except for one or two items I'd think.

this really mostly affects people with lots of in-game gold. the average player (ie me) who doesn't have a lot of gold, uses collector armor, uses collector weapons, etc, it doesn't really matter. truthfully, i couldn't care less. i'd never heard of armbraces until this incident. and people are making a big deal over... mini-pets??? those little trophies that follow you around and do absolutely nothing? i have to say, some people have way too much time on their hands.

From a better source than most Guru users seem to get their own info. HoM unlocks SOMETHING for GW2; it does not allow the items/armors/etc. to be transfered to GW2. >.>

[QUOTE=Loviatar]It was more than a 400 gold drop, since I sold for 500 but could now buy for 100, BUT if you say that sort of fluctuation within a week is normal I will accept that. I know I am not the most familiar with all the fluctuations.

[QUOTE=Loviatar]Two things. First, Sup Vigor cost 12k that night (I bought one for a friend), but you said 15k. Is that also within normal fluctuation? I had never purchased on before, only salvaged. (Please know that I'm not trying to be contradictory, I am only curious. I have really little knowledge about what things cost beforehand, only what you say).

Second, what you are saying is kind of my point. If you had the start-up capital and the time to do so, you would pick the most expensive stuff you could get your hands on. But if you knew that the game exploit would be removed quickly, you would only use what you had on hand as quickly as you could. The technique for this became widely known only a short time (a couple of hours) before the reconnect feaature was removed. So yes, anyone with the means would have duped the most expensive thing they had. Do we know what extent things of lesser value got duped by players with more meager wealth, and did that affect any of the low-end economy?

I think that only applies if you believe Armbraces were the only thing being duped. From what I gather, the mechanic for this duping exploit has been in place since December 20, 2006. This duping could be the reason for the drop in ecto prices (from 10-8k to 5-4k), which was a fairly significant drop as far as "the common man" is concerned. Ecto isn't the only rare mat to drop in price either. "Monstrous" parts have dropped too. Rare runes have also dropped in price. Sup Vigor was holding at well over 30k for a good long time. It's only 13k today.

I think it's far more likely that duping has been subtley eroding the economy for some time now, and the Armbrace was the result of foolish, unchecked greed. Think of it like cash counterfeiters. The guy who prints of 20s (the most commonly used bill in my country) is less likely to get caught than the guy who counterfeits 100s or 500s. Stores frequently post that they don't accept 50s and 100s due to fear of counterfeiting... such bills are suspicious by there very nature, but it's the unnoticed 20s slipping through every day that do the real damage.

The armbraces have been spotted. It's the quiet little ectos and black dyes that have likely caused the most damage to the game's economy. That it mind... will we see loot scaling revisited?

Well, if the armbrace market can hurt the game, it's only because an item was allowed to become so expensive in the first place.

I personally think Anet should do more to keep all items in the game down to a more reasonable price range. And before everyone yells at me, it's because I figure at least 50% of the so called legitament buyers of these items 'worth over 100k' are using ebay gold. Thus supporting the bot parade.

the rich got richer, the poor stayed poor. thats about all the glitch did.

if the argument is that duping reduced the prices of black dye, superior vigor runes, ecto, etc., then i'd argue that the duping exploit was a good thing. no longer are these items only for the rich as they are now much closer within reach to everyone. only an elitest would see price drops as a bad thing.

Yeah because Crystalline Swords, Chaos axes and Magmas shields are all worthless now...

I thought tormented weapons were ugly to begin with and have no idea why people would waste their time and money trying to get one.

I, and everyone I know, was in the 'I didn't even notice'. In all seriousness, my guild hasn't made a comment, not even about the reconnect thing. And they probably never will. I've seen some other people complaining about them getting banned, and all I can do is laugh at them. The Anet team is great and handling crisis. Whatever is done by them I know will be both wise and effective, and frankly, anyone stupid enough to try to pull a fast one on them deserves to be kicked off of guildwars. Go play your kiddy WoW, dupers.

But yea. This isn't as a big a problem as many of you claim it to be, and Anet handled it so smoothly it was neigh invisible to players.

I'm already aware that equipment won't move over from GW1 to GW2, but will tormented items be unlockable? That's all I'm asking for, along with a supporting URL...

[QUOTE]hi no problem at all

easily within normal range

i bought one several months ago at 24 K for my favorite and thought it a bargain as i have seen them at 75 K and commonly in the 30k-40k range

relatively recently it has been in the 12k-18k range

with GWEN i expect a price rise as people equip heroes .

since it is an expansion of high level content with no new characters to armor and rune the demand rise in price is much slower.

people are waiting to see if they like the new armor before spending gold on runes they might not use and who knows yet how the high level heroe come equipped?

that does not matter as the more common it is the more of it exists already so a large influx would be deluted

example i sold 20 stacks of cloth once and did not even budge the price one gold piece down (my click buy thumb was sore to be honest)

Ben Miller said only weapons from GW:EN could be places in HoM in the GW:EN Gameplay Demo, which is easy to find.

With GW2 over a full year away, I'm not sure if it's good marketting strategy to start advertising product limitations... but it's their baby. I'm hoping ANET changes its mind about the above, since there are so many worthwhile GW1 weapon skins.

Your comment about the "so called legitament buyers" doesn't have a very good foundation. With a little dedication, it isn't that hard to make a lot of money in this game. Just need to set a goal for yourself and work towards it without wasting money all the time. There's plenty of people in my guild who make money the same way I did before but I have a few million and they're down to 20k. Why? They spent it while I saved it and moved on to things that turned a higher profit.

My collections have now grown to quite a large size (that I now have 50 characters to hold it). Sure some people consider me a power trader but really the only thing that matters is the amount of time you put in to it. Just so people can see the relative time, I had around 2400 hours put into the game on one account before my first year birthday rolled around. Not many people commit that much time and I'm sure some of the other people with expensive collections such as Herbalizer or Small have spent countless hours in the game too.

Anet has kept items that matter in the game to a reasonable price. Collector's items work just as well as the more expensive items. Heck that's what I used until I made my first million.

If people want the vanity items, then they should need to put in the time to earn them. The market for items in the game has worked fairly well on the principles of supply and demand. For example, most green items remained at a fairly stable price until farming guides were released (case in point: Ghial's Staff). Much larger supply for the fairly same demand = prices dropped.

The only items that fall outside of this realm of supply and demand are the items that are limited in number such as Everlasting Beetle Tonics and the Asian mini pets. Fixed supply with an evercreasing demand just meant higher and higher prices.

All in all, the only reason why items like Crystalline Swords or Elemental Swords were able to reach the prices they did is because they dropped so rarely that people were willing to pay the price for them. Does ebayed gold increase the prices? Sure but in the overall cost of things not by much as now 100k (the minimum purchasable from a site?) is only 20 ectos and previously was worth even fewer. How many people do you know that have purchased in game gold? None of the players I know have and the only ones I've seen in game were the ones that were whining in Ascalon Int 1 that their delivery man was late. All of the people I know that have a million or more in gold all spend a lot of time in game (at least they were on most of the time I was) which leads me to conclude that for the majority of players, there is a correlation between time spent in game and wealth in game.

I agree. I am still pissed that people did that... but I too thought the weapons were pretty ugly other than the staffs.

As for me wanting one, not so much. They are all tainted goods in my eyes and I wouldn't touch one now. Plus who gives a crap about old chapter weapons once EOTN comes out. Meh, good job you uber hackers. You get the nerd of the year award.