picks vs ectos

ok now im in a delema, you all know the recent perma shadow sin has made it terrible easy to farm the under world and so terribely easy to get ectos, now many people have been telling me the ecto will drop, ive been asking many people thier opion and these are my thoughts, If shadow form sin has been in effect for about a month how come the ectos value hasnt plumeted. Wouldnt the decline of ectos mean the decline of everything else that uses ectos as a trading transaction. For those people who have many stacks of ectos these would mean a very large loss of money. Would it be wise to invest ones cash into a more steady items ex. lockpicks, whose price has been known not to change?

thanks

I dont think ectos will drop, because im sure ppl have been using the ectos they go to craft fow armor or chaos gloves. If they did drop, Gogo Z-keys. Nono Picks

And no matter how easy they make it the price never faulters from 4.8K-5.5K (with very few exceptions) for a year now. I have no way of proving it, but I bet it's fixed as far as lowest price is allowed. Too many things in the game in the last year should have brought the prices down further.

The lowest price ive seem them was only at 4.5k flat.
im starting to think they are at a fixed price.

Yesterday in Kamadan, people start to sell their ectos or trade with zaishen keys. I wonder the price drop of ectos will actually happen...

Everyone had started to do that when the Z title came out.

I think the ecto drop thing is just another form of the whole y2k issue. People think it will happen, its possible it will happen, but it hasn't and it is unlikely to happen.

And if worst comes to worst, then ectos will fall under 5k and people will sell Z-Keys instead of Ectos. Nothing more.

the price of ectos used to be pretty high. 15k or more at one point. when lockpicks were introduced, they were at around 7-8k. now they're at around 5k, usually less. personally i'd make trades in lockpicks since their values are pretty much set.

It better not drop... Im hoping that it doesn't become the next ruby or onyx... I just received a large sum of ectos and have no room for money anymore, i think i might trade for z-keys.....Also i noticed that it HAS dropped, it is 4.8k at trader when it was usually always at 5.5k im getting worried and i might start resorting to using z-keys since they have a use even if the trade medium dies, though it will fluctuate,,,

Ectos aren't going to fall in price, they barely fluctuated due to ursan, and they arent gonna change due to SF sins, especially since a) its been a month & price is steady and b) those with high end transaction demand ectos at that price.

But if you are worried, then go for it trade em in for picks/zkeys.

I love how people are bringing up the "but it's been a month", tbh you need to give it more time than a single month where people will be still using ectos vs. the supply the farmers are bringing in. I don't necessarily think ectos will drop to like 1k but I think the average price window is going to lower.

lowest price ive seen for ectos at trader was 2.9k each. theres even a thread about it here on guru...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10262982

i was lucky enough to get 130 of em for under 3.5k each that day =D

anyway...on topic, yes i think ecto price might possibly drop below 4.8 at trader in the next few months. this will take time because people are so used to 5.5 that they buy from trader when it hits 4.7-4.8. i would invest in picks or just spend it on titles or HoM.

either way, picks is safer because ecto price certainly isnt going to rise.

where, post link

UW has always been easy to farm, the perma shadow sin is just another way to do it among the long list of quick and easy UW farms.

It's too hard to predict as we do not operate in a 100% supply and demand universe (supply is *not* limited).

At the hight of ecto farming - the early 105 prot bond monk build - inflation was so high due to the amount of ecto being farmed that even semi-popular minor runes were out of the price range of anyone who didn't ecto farm and ecto's were WAY easier to farm then. You could aggro everything and come back two hours later and still be alive. No Dying Nightmares and nothing fled AoE damage so easy to kill too.

I started GW at that point and nearly quit because I couldn't afford even the lowest armor at Ascalon let alone any useful runes. I stuck with it hoping that things would either change or I would get a lucky drop as other than that I really enjoyed playing the game (things changed, never had the lucky drop). Nothing like sup vigor and absorption runes costing 100k at the trader and all without heroes increasing demand by a large amount. Superior monk runes were all over 50k and desirable minors were 20+.

If the past is to be assumed then this will cause prices to *rise* due to people having too much money and able to spend large amounts on anything they want for no reason at all. Though I don't see the SF change to be that drastic, I doubt it will change much at all anyway as it doesn't change that much. It only moves the line a little bit towards towards the casual player and I do not find it that clear which way this change will go - more supply or more money/demand.

Of course I could be all wrong as this will cause everything to be worth nothing - but then I suppose the 100k vigors and 20+k black dyes never occurred either.

the day that the ectos droped down was becasue some one sold them to the merchant they didnt stay that low at all

For now ecto seems pretty stable and is fluctuating between 4.8k and 5.5k. Anet needs to add more ecto sinks, some new trader with weapons or armor for ecto (in the same way they introduced chaos gloves) because people would clearly go and get it removing even more ecto from circulation.

This feels more like a discussion so I'm moving it to Riverside.

I just love these "Oh noes the sky is falling" threads. The chaos ecto farm is nothing new. It was possible to farm this area BEFORE the sin update. The only thing the update did was just to make it a little easier (now you don't have to be so precise on your spell casting). When the price of ectos drop at the trader then people see the drop and buy some back so the price goes back up. It has done this consistantly for a long time now so I don't see this changing.

I'm pretty sure most of the ectos being farmed are either going into someone's storage; being bought by someone to go into their storage, or being used for obby armor and such. I really doubt people are going to flock to the trader to unload their ecto, and drive the price down.

If all the UW farming (other than the new perma sin style) hasn't deflated the ecto market lately (like the ruby) then I really don't see it happening.

1. We already have a "the sky is falling because of the SF 'uptade'" thread.

2. I explained twice now in the other thread why the bottom is not going to fall out of the ecto market. Put briefly, the appearance that there's going to be a huge increase in supply is an illusion. After 3 years of nonstop farming and hoarding, the ecto supply is so large that the extra ecto from the SF farm have a very small effect on the size of the supply as a whole. Search out my first post in the other thread for more details.

3. The idea of lockpicks as a currency is only supported by idiots and people in big faction farming alliances. Seriously, why on earth would you support a currency that someone else could buy 25% more of for the same amount of gold? Are you trying to sabotage your own buying power? Moreover, there's no trader. Unless you can find a seller who actually wants a pile of lockpicks, or is happy to sit around while you sell them to chest runners instead of just finding another buyer, you're going to lose 50% of their value selling them to the trader to raise cash quickly.

I might add that Z-Keys as a currency is also a dumb idea, since they don't have a trader or even a merchant. So can can neither buy nor sell them in large amounts quickly when you need to.

Armbraces as a currency is the dumbest idea of the bunch, since they've been duped so much that they are probably the most common item in the game.

I'm all for nerfing SF. But I'm also just. So if you want to nerf SF, let's nerf ALL farming build- W/Rts, Rt/Ws, 55 monks, 55 nigg, erm, necros, 130 dervs and whatnot!

Otherwise I'll think you're a hypocrite.

Finally a sane voice amongst all the madness! Honestly I think the only thing this "new" farming craze is going to do is let more people obtain FoW armor and Chaos gloves. The only people that are going to be negatively affected are the people whos epeen is dictated by others not being able to obtain what they already have.

And really what other item could be substituted as currency besides the ecto?

Ummm.....zkeys?

how about Black dye, if you want to get extreme. they are after all worth a lot more then ecto. silly to think ecto will ever plummet. might as well be introduced like a 5$ bill. gold, ecto, platinum. *rolls eyes* so silly imho.

I think that ectos are still #1 for noncash trading. Why Black Dyes? They are like 6k-7k each. IF something was worth 200k, how would you pay that without exceeding the price? Ectos are 5k ea, which makes them better for the over 100k trades. Unless something like Rubies were to skyrocket to 5k.

Thinking about reinvesting the ecto huh? There is a very obvious item to invest in that has nowhere to go but up in price. All you need to do is look.

Why not just increase the storage limit on cash and the limit on how much cash can be traded at once (you'd need to increase how much money you can carry at once, also)? Sorry if this question has been brought up before.

now thats the obvious answer. still silly imho...
reinventing the ecto.. i had to snicker when i read that. trading will always be an item if issue. how much is this how much is that -1k from trader..lol. its can be the simplest of things or the hardest, i guess it all depends on what you are buying or trading. meh.. i think its fine as is. still extreme (black dye, black dye) lol sorry just had to go there lol

Currently ectos is the currency ... if that is going to change I doubt it's going to happen because in a forum thread some people said something ... if it's going to change it's going to change due to in-game events.

I was told there are more ectos in game now then every before and once people are done with there fow armour the prise will drop you suggest this to be false but what other item can i buy using cash that u know will stay at a constant rate? here i looked at picks why becuase u cannot farm them they sell easily at 1.25k and seem to have stayed the same for a year now why do u disagree?

what item do you speak of

Surely most farmers like me are gonna save their ecto's until they have vast stores For A.) just before Gw2 getting Hom unlocked fully and B.) obsidian armor of our own its the most expensive in the game for sure.

i know that alot of my guildmates stopped after they got enough for just one set of obsidian. so the problem will arrise when the influx onew players exceed the amount of players still going for obsidian as the farmers who are for money will be rougly stable i assume. (you seriously cant do SF for too long its called 12 year old ness and usually lasts for 1 year.) im 17 btw and am happy to use lameness to acheive fancyness.

what ya think of my opinion?

1. You need to learn to use periods. They are a very useful bit of punctuation that helps people detect where one sentence ends and the next begins. Without them, your post borders on incomprehensible. Commas are nice too.

2. Anything that has a trader and is bottomed-out on the trader's price will probably stay there, and, if it moves, it can only go up. That's as close as you can get to something that will stay at a constant rate. Of course, it may prove hard to find people selling these items, since most people just merch them.

3. Who cares if you can farm lockpicks when you can buy them?

4. Whenever someone buys a lockpick at 1.25k, they are almost certainly putting 50g into the pocket of someone with access to a discount merchant. If lockpicks became a de facto currency, these people would become insanely rich in short order. Much faster than farmers and probably faster than powertraders too. And insanely rich people cause inflation that destroys your buying power. How do you expect to ever outbid one of these people for an item when you're giving them the gold to bid against you with? That's just dumb.

/laugh hard
Lockpicks sellers who can get them from cheap merchants can in no way become 'insanely rich'. Do you even know how many players have access to cheap merchants? More than 5000 consistently, and triple that occassionally thanks to border swings and fluctuations. Add to that huge amount of players who have a friend in a town holding guild, that could buy for them for no profit. Very few of them actually do the active lockpick reselling now, it's very time consuming and farming provides better cash for time spent.

If Lockpicks really became the number 1 currency for trades above 100k (which is unlikely, but they may become a secondary currency widely accepted by sellers) the market price for 1 lockpick wouldn't be higher than 1,200g.

Imagine all the rich people and powertraders would convert large parts of their liquid fortunes into stacks of lockpicks, they would have to get them from town holders but it doesn't mean they would overpay 50g per lockpick! (I bought 10 full stacks last week, I found far better deals). With towns full of WTB Lockpicks hundreds of people with access to cheap merch but who don't normally waste time WTS'ing them would emerge, and be able to make a couple quick plat.

But not any big fortunes! Just a few k here and there. Also, NO inflation would be generated, as the extra money would come from other players, and in fact huge MILLIONS of gold would be sink into the merchant never to return!

Instead thousands of lockpick fullstacks would enter the economy, never to be used for chest opening, but only for value holding and trading. Imagine having lots high trades done lockpicksway, like "WTS unded kuunavang 100k+100lp" everywhere, trading that would lead to having people receiving lockpicks but not necessarily needing them, wanting to convert back to cash. They would need to compete with the resellers and sell lower to sell quick, they would often be found selling even lower than 1,200g each. And there would be much less gold in the economy to pay back for the lockpicks!

I predict 1,200g to be the average exchange rate for figuring out trades (it's simple - stack of lockpicks = 300k) for a long time, and it could only go DOWN from there.

Very few people do it now because lockpicks aren't currency now. If they became currency, that would change.

Pooling money in the hands of a few always inflates prices, at least for the high-end items they want to buy. As has been said many times before, if no one had 100k to pay, nothing would cost 100k. Handing faction farmers free fortunes would give them more buying power, at the expense of everyone else.

That's an interesting theory. I'll have to think about it. Certainly lockpicks at exactly 1200g wouldn't be as grossly unfair, but I'm not sure I believe your rationale for why prices would move to 1200g, or below.

You fail.

/troll

you'll all see.. the Chaos farm is far too lucrative, with people walking out of the UW after 2 hours of casual farming and passing off almost 60+ ecto, and thats not even talking about the hardcore guys.. once everyone exhaust themselves on Obsidian armor and Chaos Gloves, they're going to delve into the powerhouse side of the trading market, flooding and saturating the traders and players with ecto out the ass, till the point that its going to be as about as useful as the American dollar.. the 3 people i know really farming the Plains a good bit (and i know they can't be the most hardcore out there), have made around 1000 ecto each so far... yeah.. thats great for the economy..

I don't know why but I have a feeling an update nerfing either perma shadow form or not being able to solo UW will come out tomorrow, being 6/12/08.
But ectos are going to be steady I think. People will still sell for around 5k all the time. If for some reason they do drop. Z- Keys will be the new currency past 100k.

They actually went down to 10gold each during the trader reset, you could buy stacks of 10 at the material trader for 100g.

i love these threads that think ecto will go under 1,5k....
not gonna happen...
ever....


until the trader goes mental the 2nd time...