I recommend increasing contribution value for ectoplasm

A Glob of Ectoplasm is an elite endgame component with a wide variety of uses that is worth much more than any skill 400 trophy item and likely to stay that way.  Instead of being worth 110 contribution for 10, I would recommend 400 contribution for a stack of 10 (40 each) as they will likely be more expensive and harder to get in large numbers than any typical trophy or base material.  With bolts of gossamer and orichalcum ignots worth 250 per 10, I think this is a reasonable adjustment and might encourage more donations of ectoplasms to our crafters.  They are by far the most expensive/difficult portion of creating level 80 exotics.

/agreed, thanks for pointing that out. Waiting on Fog & Shmi's approval :)

I think you misunderstand the purpose of the Marketplace. It's purpose is to recognize crafters who level a craft and push "combine" to benefit a member of the family. It's not an alternative to the Trading Post, and it doesn't attempt to track the fluctuations in value for materials. Supply and demand are the biggest factors affecting the value, and both supply and demand can change radically overnight if ArenaNet chooses. Instead, we value materials on the Marketplace based on their sell prices to the vendor. When a material is rare, it will be quite undervalued on the Marketplace. This is WAI, see previous paragraph. :)

There's a workaround to order items crafted with rare mats:

If you've ordered an item on a marketplace that's not getting filled it might be because the mats are too expensive for the crafter to supply. So please considered changing the order so that YOU provide the mats. For the crafter, this reduces the reward to just the "I pressed Combine for a guildie" part.

In the order form, check Player Provided under Materials:

Crafter Provided
Player Provided <-- CLICK THIS

I was just making the recommendation specifically for ectoplasm as they are a special case. They were so important in GW1 they became their own alternative currency, and they seem similarly important in GW2. The marketplace tracks not only crafters, but also contributors who are kind enough to freely provide materials needed by crafters... in fact, that's what's dominating the marketplace right now are material orders, not crafted item requests. I'm not suggesting trying to adjust every possible component to track market value or anything like that. I merely think ectoplasms are the single most important and widely used crafting component in the game and guild members willing to fill orders for them should earn more contribution for it than they do now.

I think that there are people out there, who wont be using the ectoplasm for crafting. Those are the people who should be donating them thru the marketplace here. I mean, as a part of the family you want to help the family. I handed out plenty of fine crafting materials and the regular materials. Mainly the ones I wasn't using for leatherworking, but now that I am 400, I don't have nearly the supply I would have, in order to pick another profession. But it's okay with me, cause I put my family in front of my own needs. And you don't HAVE to donate your ectoplasm. I mean, I heard it sells for like 22silver? But at the end of the day, it comes down to who you want to help out, and what your goals are within the game. IF you need that high end equipment and you wanna buy it using money, then you farm the objects you can sell for the most gold. IF you wanna help the family, donate some high end material. There are tons of people out there farming globs. The amount you need to make a full set of exotic armor, is ridiculous. Exotic Jewelry, is even way more ridiculous. I think the amount of contribution points you get is fine.

The Contribution System is built to test one's willingness to GIVE WITHOUT REWARD. "Giving even when not beneficial to yourself". While you may not see 22s per Glob of Ectoplasm, you help a member of the family get a weapon they desire. Contribution isn't about getting things, it's about your willingness to give things. You don't have to use it or donate your ectoplasms, but if you want contribution points those are more points than most materials. Rad, keep in mind if I adjust the price of Ectoplasms it ripples through every price of everything that uses it. In time we will see how it plays out but right now Ecto's are at the top tier pricing. The only things that are higher are things that cost a Gold or more.

What I will do is reduce the amount of ectoplasms that can be claimed at once and reduce the size of the split stack so you can donate 2 at a time.

I will say this as a 400 crafter who has crafted many exotics. Ecotoplasms.... are not hard to come by end game. yes they are 20s per ecto on the tp. But of any supplies that i have any difficulty with its the blood/claws/other fine crafting, all of which are also selling for 20+s on the tp as well. I will note that yes ectoplasms are indeed classed as an exotic item themself, but I have never had to buy a single ectoplasm in game. On the other hand the Powerful blood i need for my exotics i have had to buy all of them from the tp except for 1 or 2. If someone knows a place where you can farm powerful blood or other 400 tier fine crafting materials. I'd love to know. At 20-25s per item you could farm a commander book in probably an hour.

No problem, it was merely a suggestion as I thought it would encourage more people to donate ectos, that's all. It would indeed ripple through the system more (I think appropriately so) and make the level 80 exotics cost a good deal more to order and reward crafters more for making them. I understand the spirit and intent of the marketplace... heck, 75% of the stuff I make for people or donate are just via guild chat or whispers and aren't even tracked on the site. Economics is just a passion of mine and I'm always interested in trying to apply it in various useful ways. Ben, I know you're trying to make the whole website marketplace and ranking system meet certain goals and encourage certain behaviors and I'm not 100% privy to your intentions, so I'm just offering up ideas on things I think might help, that's all. In the end, the system on the site is indeed a "market." Markets give feedback whether you want them to or not. Typically imbalances and log jams will become noticeable and consistent, and if you rebalance things a bit, it helps a lot with order flow. The game itself as well as our guild marketplace are still young and will take some time to level out. Oh, and SuperHeroGeorge, farming trolls in Frostgorge Sound in the canyon west of the Earthshake Basin waypoint is great for Powerful Bloods... I've gotten many that way and yah, their price has risen from about 11s to 18s now. Thing is, ectoplasms are used for all high end crafting, from the mystic forge, to jewelry to weapons/armor. Berserker's gear is the big craze right now as people are realizing the value of +crit damage on dps, but chances are it's a bit of a fad and the gold farmers will find super efficient ways of farming powerful blood and help the price drop. No other skill 400 trophy is nearly as expensive. Next closest are armored scales (Knight's) which have been trading 10 to 14s, then elaborate totems (cleric's) for about 9s, then all other 400 trophies are 2s or less. As Lakshmi said though, there's no intention of trying to track items here with the ebb and flow of the trading post. I'm merely disputing a bit of the information in your post with more specific numbers. Oh, and about skill 400 trophies. They're a bit rare. Even off level 80 monsters. They don't farm as quickly as lower level trophies. I just spent about 60 minutes or so farming trolls, and got 20 Potent Bloods (skill 325), and only 4 Powerful Bloods (the 400 skill drop). Arenanet could easily tweak drop rates at some point, but that's kind of how it works right now. At this spot you also get some other drops, so I'd say about 2g worth of materials per hour... definitely not a commander book super fast, but it's reliable and steady.

» Edited on: 2012-09-21 23:00:41

Just an FYI there is a jumping puzzle in Malchor's Leap called "Antre of Adjournment" that has 5 or 6 little smugglers boxes along the way that have crafting trophies, for me they have usually been 375-400 skill with the occasional stick of butter. It's a simple short jumping puzzle, no tricks traps or mobs, I do it once a day just for the trophies. If anyone needs help finding it, just give me a hollar on Dorre. Dorre

I'd like to bring this topic up again, because its nowhere near resolved. I am not sure how contribution value relates to price (vault credits), but for the rights of crafters I must speak up to this; personally i don't even craft, so this is not for me, its for the family. Using vendor value is not the proper way to set vault credit prices, in fact, market place items does not reflect vendor prices, example: A glob of ecto vendors for about 2.5s , my lv80 exotic coat vendors for 2.4s, but guess what? My other lv78 exotic coat vendors for 3.8s, do you see what I am trying point out here? The vendor prices aren't reliable for comparison. Back to market place, ecto is 14 vault credits and 2.5s vendor in game, but an exotic lv80 armor is over 1000 vault credits and 2.5-3.4s vendor in game, just this case alone shows how things can easily go out of hand when you try to price things on vendor value. I am assuming its over 1000 vault credits just because it was calculated from the entire material cost, while the actual vendor cost of the product is ignored <- and it has to be doesn't it? it doesn't make sense for an ecto to cost the same as a piece of armor, but that's what can happen when you base pricing off of vendor prices. Then there are the lodestones, these things are probably the most ridiculously priced objects on the marketplace , 14 vault credits for a lodestone while its at most 1g 50s per piece in game's Trading Post. There are reason why these things are priced so high, its hard to get, really hard to get. I see people ordering 10 corrupted lodestone or 10 destroyer lodestone on the site, this is abusive and exploiting the marketplace, because room was provided for such exploitation. If I see someone order 1 it makes more sense, because if you want to make runes, some times you need 6 of these, and you have no idea of capability to farm it, but other than runes, lodestones are required at large amounts to make special exotics and lengendaries, required at 100-250. These are superficial items, if anything they should be priced even higher. People that do know how to obtain lodestones will not want to fill these orders, sure its for the family, but why not just help craft an armor that gives more contribution? I am suggesting the price to at least somewhat follow the trading post, although dictated by demand, its also a good indication of how "difficult" it is to obtain the said items, vendor price does not reflect this one bit; it just doesn't. I don't see why the crafters' reward is not based on their efforts but arbitrary vendor values Anet declared. With all said, I am not making this post to blame anyone, I am saying the marketplace price reflects poorly on areas on the efforts crafters needs to make, and now I have raised such concerns and provided the information I know of, its up to the elders and the leader to investigate more into this for the sake of our crafters; but since I am not a crafter, if my concerns are not the slightest similar to any of their concerns, then treat this as void.

Susulemon, This is not how the marketplace works. Cost of Materials * 1.25% = Refined Materials Cost of Refined Materials * 1.25% = Composite Materials Cost of Composite Materials * 1.25% = Final Product The cost of your Exotic lv80 armor includes the cost of all of the materials plus a 25% crafters fee at each stage of production.

I adjusted it to the same bar as the rare salavageables in Rift. All items that use this have now been inflated by the new price. Enjoy.

Avengel, That's not a very fair judgement. To this point the Marketplace for GW2 has processed 4,901 Item requests in the first 2 months. That's over 80 orders per day. The marketplace is working just fine. In comparison the RIFT marketplace in the same timeframe has processed 1,090 orders.

As a new member of teh family I am not sure how much my voice is going to count in this discussion, but I can say that in just 2 days I have farmed 14 Ectos and that doesnt count the ones I used to fill a request for a friend. We have multiple dragon events per day that are almost always going to reward you with at least one piece that can be broken down to an ecto or more. If anyone is having a hard time tracking down the events I can help them identify timers for each.

each CoF, CoE, HOTW and Arah explore gives you 3 chests, 60 tokens that can be turned into 2 yellows over lvl 68 (can salvage to get ectos). You also get a lot of money from dungeons. I think it would be fair to increase the cost the player needs to pay for it, seems low.

"The guild marketplace in my opinion does not work for this game since the economy is so low and the fact there is a cash shop. Also taking into consideration that the auction house system is across multiple servers and not just one. There is no way to "bank" on any crafted or harvested item." It really depends on the scope of what is being done with it. The mission of the Marketplace is just trying to see who gives and recognize for it. You could definitely come up with a different system; an internal trading post if you will (as Fog alluded to). There's an API out there that mines trading post data and could be used to adjust the price of items as they update in the Marketplace. You could set a currency exchange between gold piece and contribution points, i.e. if 1 silver piece = 1 contribution point and I donate something that is worth 4.5 silver I get 4.5 contribution points. A system like this would ensure that when I go to to buy stuff to make money that the profit is going to a guild member instead of a random player. It'd be a totally cool system but with anything like that you have to look at the benefit analysis. Basically: How much work is this to develop? How much work is this to maintain? Who are the stakeholders involved? What is the need for this? How does it impact the Gaiscioch mission? It might be worth examining the benefit but any benefit that could be derived would probably be more easily realized by educating people fully on how the trading post works.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. This marketplace has seen 41,747 orders filled in the 2 years it's been online. First off if your trying to turn a profit on this system you best read: "Use of the marketplace for monetary gain, or auctioning, is strictly prohibited and will result in the immediate termination of your membership. Remember: Honor, Respect, Integrity, Fellowship. This system is not to be used for personal gain." It's in bright orange text on the cover of the marketplace page. There may be a disconnect as to what the Marketplace is. This is not a place where you can get materials to turn around and sell on the TP. This is not a equivalent to the TP. The Marketplace is a test to measure how much your willing to give to your family with little reward. Throwing words like "Fair" at this system has no ground to stand on. The way it is designed it is built from the ground up to be a "Contribution" monitoring system. Not some fancy connected to the game dynamic pricing structure. If you want to use the TP use the TP. If you wan't to help your family, then use the marketplace. This system was designed from the ground up to test one's willingness to give. If you don't use it because your looking at this from a "What's in it for me" perspective then it's doing it's job perfectly. That's why I designed it the way I did. The flush out the people who are all about "Me" and highlight those who are all about "We". The marketplace is built on a principle of Sacrifice. What are you willing to give to your family. Those that give, shall be rewarded. Those that don't shall remain the same.