Feedback talk:User/MithranArkanere/Weapon Upgrade Trader

I really like this idea and would also like to see if it's possible to add inscriptions to this new npc or the rune trader. --Johnny Rodrigues 23:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Inscriptions are weapon upgrades, just like both insignia and runes are armor upgrades. Actually, to save space, rune traders could be renamed to upgrade traders, and have Tabs with weapon and armor upgrades. MithTalk 04:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Excellent idea, I've long wanted one of these (I don't have 3 hours to spend looking for someone to sell and upgrade >.>). --Gah_ 15:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

World Category

Since this is in regards to adding a NPC, it would probably do better in the World category than the player interaction, since it's not really about how players interact with each other. -- Wyn talk 23:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Well there were no other category with trading under it, and traders are an indirect medium for players to interact, they don't create items, they just take items from players and give them to other players. It's a bit hard to state categoris for this NPC, it is related to items, to economy and it also includes adding an NPC. I'll change them a bit, but I'll keep the trading, since it's a trader after all. MithTalk 23:41, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah... would help me to read it better :P -- Wyn talk 23:42, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, done, now it's Category A: "World->npcs->traders" (add an NPC...) and "Player interaction->trade systems"(...for the trade system). That should be OK. MithTalk 23:48, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I made a little change to trade system so it would show up in the tables correctly. -- Wyn talk 00:08, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Question

You are aware that it's technically impossible, right? Backsword 07:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing actually impossible. Upgrades work just like runes. The only difference is their variable properties. And that can be either changed or avoided. It won't be the first time an entire set of items is replaced, like it has already happened with dyes. MithTalk 13:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

What I see hard to do is the possibility to sell any mod, but only buy maxed ones. Since the trader system is based in supply/demand, the max items would have their price lowered by the not perfect mods being sold to the trader. -- Large 23:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Not if the non perfect count less. Hm... let's take the case of a +HP upgrade for weapons (10..30HP), one 30HP upgrade would add one 30HP upgrade to the supply, but a 10HP would not. But we can't have only the 30HP adding, or the rest would lose all value. Instead of that, the lesser upgrades would count less, in geometric progression, so all count, but only the maxed ones would directly add items to the supply. Something like:

Progression
Health	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
Supply increase	1/10000	1/9000	1/8000	1/7000	1/6000	1/5000	1/4000	1/3000	1/2000	1/1000	1/900	1/800	1/700	1/600	1/500	1/400	1/300	1/200	1/100	1/50	1

With this, to get 1 30HP added to the supply, you'll need 1 30HP or 50 29 HPs or 100 28 HPs and so on. To get one maxed mod by selling non maxed ones, you'll have to sell 10000. Of cpurse the numbers are just examples it could be 100,000 instead 100,000. The point is making the trader pay for the lesser upgrades and count them for supply, but much less. Selling them would be pointless, unlike runes, that have downsides in big shapes and come only in 3 stages, weapon upgrades are acquired maxed most of the time. MithTalk 00:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It still wouldn't work, Mith. It wouldn't even work for eg. the 'Ebon' prefix. Weapon Upgrades have the wrong data structure, and are not stored the way those items that can be traded are. Of course weapon upgrades could be replaced with Something Else (tm), that would work. But then you'd need a Something Else (tm) trader.

It's not would love one, most mods I look for is not worth enough for players to bother trading. But it won't work, so suggesting it is a waste. Backsword 14:31, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Eh... I don't think you actually getting it... I SERIOUSLY doubt traders taking the actual items and storing them somewhere, that would be a resource suicide. The logical thing is just storing the values for the number of items in stock. 3000 30HP sword hilts, 1000 "Don't Fear the Reaper" inscriptions, and so on. If they don't store stock valuesin that kind of way, but like in player inventories (item by item), then either all my years of programing experience I've been lied by teachers, colleagues and bosses or the responsible for that in ANet crew has been smoking A LOT of weed (or something worse). So let's consider that the way they are saved in player inventories is completely irrelevant and so their data structure. My suggestion doesn't need to sell all of them and consequently storing all possible variations, but only the maxed ones. All would be bought, but only the maxed ones would be sold, so the trader background won't need to have stored data for all possible variations of each upgrade, just one for each upgrade. When players sell to the trader the stock is increased, when traders sell to players, the stock is decreased. With that mechanic, the structure of the item is not important, because it's not actually stored anywhere, just turned into a simple numeric value. The problem with weapon upgrades is that they have variable properties with a range way wider than runes. Runes have 3 variations at most, while some weapon upgrades may have more than 10 variations. Selling only maxed upgrades make the variations completely unimportant for the stock part. But in order to count also the sells of non-maxed upgrades, the system would need to count increases of fractions in the stock instead point by point, otherwise a non-maxed upgrade would become maxed when added to the stock. That's the biggest change what I suggest would need: Make non-maxed upgrades count less than 1 to increase stock, possibly by storing stock values with floating point values. Sell one 30HP sword hilt, the stock is increased in 1. Sell one 10HP sword hilt, the stock is increased in 0.00001.

Oh, and even if they had to change the upgrades altogether to make a weapon upgrade trader (in which case it won't be the way I suggest, but by turning them into something more similar to runes, with less variations), they won't have to make 'something new'. When they changed dyes, then didn't change the name of the kind of item, they didn't become 'tinctures' or whatnot. So no, it won't be 'something else', it would be just 'weapon upgrades', and that would be only in the case if they changed them, which would be much more complicated and time consuming than what I suggest. MithTalk 15:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem here is that you think that the weapon upgrades exist in many variations. They don't: there is one variation which stores varible data. This is unlike runes, where the minor, mojaor and superior runes are technically just three different items. And that's why the trader infrastructer can deal with runes but not weapon upgrades. There is no such item as the 30HP sword hilt, there is just a +hp sword hilt, with a variable. And the trader system can't deal with that. There is no item for it to store a stock value of.

An no, when they changed dye they changed dye. Not changing the text string used doesn't mean that the item wasn't. The name is just data stored, and can be apllied to a completly different item. Backsword 15:43, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I considered that (I think you mean something like Vigor Rune is item 0003, Superior Vigor is item 0005, while all sword pommels of Fortitude are item 0900, or all sword pommels are item 0900 and they may have properties just like weapons have), and the trader selling only maxed upgrades is in part a conclusion from that. But it's not like the properties of the items are invisible to the system. When you add an upgrade to a weapon, the property is in some way transferred to the item. That means that the system must be able to see that property. And each property has a fixed range within which the property varies. A +HP Sword Pommel will never go under 10HP nor over 30HP. So, one you can read the property, since the trader sells only the maximum variation of that item, you only has to compare the property in that item with the 'maxed' one, and add the value accordingly. So, if we consider the system saves only the number of a certain item, not the item itself, and creates and destroys them instead storing them like players do in their storage, all that would be needed is reading the property of the item, increase the number, and destroy the item.

I'm not just asking for the very exact system of runes, but one that will look like the rune system for the players, but internally it ill be slightly different, not selling the items just like that, only the maxed ones.

Yeah, they changed dye, but their 'niche' in the game didn't change at all, dyes are still dyes, people don't consider them a different item with different usefulness. They are still dyes, and they still use the same trader NPCs. MithTalk 19:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes that's what I mean. (of fortitude being a specific item). You keep bringing up how things look to normal players, but I don't think you really arguing that impressions will fix technical issues. Yes, obviously the game data is available to the game in general. But that specific data is not something the existing trade infrastucture handles. And if you are not looking to use the trade system, then you are asking for an new system, let's call it a 'Weapons Upgrade exchanger'. But such a system would require a new server infrastucture, vstly more effort to implement than a trader, and to me seemms even lesss likely than replacing weapon upgrades with Something Else. Seeing as Joe has said that he is not strong on the server side, IIRC.

But a weapons upgrade trader, where the words mean what they do now, is not possible. Backsword 10:16, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You talk as if you had access to the infrastructure, do you happen to work for Anet? MithTalk 13:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I just pay attention when people from Anet talks about it. Which they do surprisingly often. Backsword 14:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Never seen any reference to it. Can you give me a link? MithTalk 14:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Not so easy as a central repository. You'll have to stalk edits made by anet members. >Joe primarily. The bug reports are also useful, as QA will often explain why something is or is not a bug by how the game works. Backsword 21:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it was recent I would consider it. But if it's so old that you'll have to dig in Archives or about the time when other suggestions things like the Menagerie, Heroes or The Stylist were also deemed as 'impossible' then I rather not. I searched and found nothing similar, neither in all the suggestion sections in forums I follow. MithTalk 18:44, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't work with current system

I'd love to have a trader like this, if it were for me this feature would be added into the game ASAP. BUT... there are a lot of versions of each weapon upgrade, here I mean 'perfect' and 'not perfect'. A fortitude upgrade can be +20HP, +30, +60 etc. There's a hunt on these perfect upgrades and they're worth significantly more than the not perfect ones. This wouldn't work for a trader though, to sell all these different upgrades you'd need some sort of auction house. Though, if the trader would sell fixed bonus upgrades, like always +25HP for example, it might work as it would give newer (and poor) players more chance of a good upgrade, while other players can hunt for the higher bonus upgrades. ~ Sanna 01:45, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I addresses that in the previous section. PvP unlocks have 3 'stages' of unlocking. If you really so want the traer to sell non-maxed ones, they could sell just those three stages, not aaaaall the variations. But I still think that such a trader should buy all, but sell only maxed. If a player finds the 29HP too expensive, they would still have normal player-player trades, with a bonus of having a reference price in the trader to start with. MithTalk 13:24, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It would be much more simple to keep the trader selling only maxed items and buying all of them (like what the merchant does). Also the stock for a particular item would only be increased when the player sold that perfect inscription/mod to the trader (much less confusing and troublesome). And to simplify things even further all of this could be added to the rune trader and changed his name to upgrade trader like someone above mentioned and split the different runes or incription options in various tabs. The code for the trader is already there from the materials and rune traders this would just be a tiny bit of comodity for someone who wants to buy a specific mod or inscription without having to search for it for days. --Johnny Rodrigues 02:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

How about having them only buy and sell max upgrades? I think that adding a complicated system for buying max upgrades from players would be too much for the dev team to focus on and would cause the immediate discarding of this idea. Keep it simple. The trader only trades max upgrades. Any non-max ones would be left to regular trade or merching. That leaves a much higher possibility of this actually happening. Ailina 22:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That would make pointless having the rest. Each upgrade should have a certain value, even if it's a 10HP one. MithTalk 17:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that that would be much harder to code and gives less of a chance that this will happen. It would be completely impossible to list every single number. There'd be a sword hilt of fortitude HP+10, HP+11, HP+12... up to HP+30. That's 21 different options the trader could have. And that's just sword hilts. Then you'd have 21 other fortitude (unconditional +hp) variations for all the other types of weapons and shields, (42 for staves, since they have a prefix and suffix +hp mod, but not one for foci). That's 11x21, or 231 possible unconditional fortitude mods the trader could be offering. Then you have the other +health mods, like Of Endurance (16x3=48), Of Valor (16x3=48), and Of Devotion (16x3=48). That’s 375 total different +health mods the trader could offer at one time. Then we have Furious (10x6=60), Vampiric (4x3 + 3x5=27), Sundering (11x7=77), Of Defense (2x8=16), Of Shelter (4x7=28), Of Warding (4x7=28), Of Enchanting (11x8=88), Of<attribute> (11x8=88), Of <species> Slaying (11x11x5=605), Of Mastery (11x19=209), Adept (11), Swift (9), Insightful (6), Of Quickening (6), Of Memory (11), Of Swiftness (6), Of Aptitude (11), Zealous (7), Heavy/Silencing/Poisonous/Cruel/Crippling/Barbed (31), Icy/Ebon/Shocking/Fiery (7x4=28).

That’s a total of 1,696 different mods that the trader would have to be equipped to carry. Inscriptions add another 200 even.

So the mod trader would have to be able to carry 1,896 different mods. And the player would have to search through them to find the one they want. That’s a hell of a lot of scrolling. And gw doesn’t have a search function, so it would have to be manual, since there’s no way they’re coding something that complicated just for this trivial thing, when they’re focusing so much on gw2.

If they only carried max mods, they would only need 37 total upgrades and 50 inscriptions. Plus, the Priest of Balthazar is already set up with the right layout for selling all of them (except he offers unlocks). Crossing that format with the mechanics of the trader should be no problem. That’s the only way it would actually have a ghost of a chance to happen. Ailina 19:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, Mith, your idea makes no sense. The only reason why the traders have different prices for different mats or runes or scrolls is based on supply and demand. If they only buy non max mods, and don't sell them, then how will they get a value estimate? It's impossible to get that kind of information just from the amount sold to them. For example, at the crafting materials trader, the sell value for wood is almost always exactly what the merchant would pay for them. That's because the supply is so disproportionately high in comparison to the demand that there's essentially no value. The same would happen with the non-max upgrades, except there would actually be zero demand, so the supply is infinitely higher than the demand. Therefore it wouldn't be able to give a price "reference". So with no value, they would only be worth exactly what the merch would buy them for, which is 25g -- exactly the same way that the mats trader will only pay 4g for one wood, like the merch. And we already have a merch for that. What does it matter if they're sold to the merch or to the trader if either way they disappear forever and you get 25g? 71.187.203.27 21:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC) EDIT: this is Ailina on another comp. 71.187.203.27 21:08, 19 November 2009 (UTC) EDIT 2: fixed a typo and a copy-paste error. >.> Ailina 01:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

You didn't understand. It has been already stated that the best option would be: Buy all, sell only maxed. And with "Buy" and "sell" I refer to what the Trader does, not what the player does. Of course it will buy maxed ones, not like everyone uses all upgrades just because they are maxed. Unwanted maxed upgrades would be sold. And the trader would by also the non maxed. By selling only maxed, you don't need all those combinations listed by Ailina, only the layout in the Priests. Prices would also be based on supply and demand. Let me explain this again:

• Instead considering each unit separately, we consider each type.
• A maxed mod or a mod of a type with no variations increases the supply for that type in 1.
• A non-maxed mod increases the supply in a fraction. The lower the stats of the mod are, the smaller is the fraction. I'm talking about numbers under 0.0000001 in some cases. For example, let's take a typical +10..30 HP mod:
  • +30 HP maxed mod: adds +1 to supply.
  • +29 HP mod: adds +0.001 to supply.
  • +28 HP mod: adds +0.0001 to supply.
  • +27 HP mod: adds +0.000075 to supply.
  • +26 HP mod: adds +0.00005 to supply.
  • +25 HP mod: adds +0.000025 to supply.
  • +24 HP mod: adds +0.00001 to supply.
  • +23 HP mod: adds +0.000008 to supply.
  • +22 HP mod: adds +0.000006 to supply.
  • +21 HP mod: adds +0.000004 to supply.
  • +20 HP mod: adds +0.000002 to supply.
  • +19 HP mod: adds +0.000001 to supply.
  • +18 HP mod: adds +0.0000009 to supply.
  • +17 HP mod: adds +0.0000008 to supply.
  • +16 HP mod: adds +0.0000007 to supply.
  • +15 HP mod: adds +0.0000006 to supply.
  • +14 HP mod: adds +0.0000005 to supply.
  • +13 HP mod: adds +0.0000004 to supply.
  • +12 HP mod: adds +0.0000003 to supply.
  • +11 HP mod: adds +0.0000002 to supply.
  • +10 HP mod: adds +0.0000001 to supply.

Will there be demand for the non maxed upgrades? NO, because the trader won't sell them. Will the lesser upgrades increase supply? Yes, but in a waaay smaller proportion than the. The trader would actually transform several non maxed into one maxed, but it won't be like you'll get a +30 by selling 10 +10 to the trader. It would be more like serveral players sell 1.000.000 +10, and the trader gets a +30, and the fastest one gets it.

By the way, all numbers are just examples for reference, I never mean exact numbers in my suggestions.

To put it simply, the maxed mods would really affect the price, while the non-maxed would affect it a little, but with minimal impact in the lesser ones, and the demand of the maxed mods would be what really decide the price. Same goes with prices. Prices would be based on supply and demand, but the price paid to a lesser upgrade would be a fraction of the price paid for a maxed one, the same fraction of supply it will increase. MithTalk 01:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Your suggestion completely negates the entire concept of the trader. The whole idea is that they don't make any of their own goods, they only act as a conduit between players. This discussion was about creating an npc that functioned just like the mats and runes traders, except with mods. You’re proposing an entirely new functionality. Traders have never created items, only bought and sold them from players, while acting as a slight money sink. They would have to completely redesign and recode an entirely new concept that is not at all like anything in GW as is, and they're not going to do all that for an honestly unneeded addition that would not be worth nearly the amount of work put in. There is no place in the game at all where an npc's prices vary based on anything other than supply and demand for THAT EXACT ITEM. Merchants never change their prices, collectors always offer the same thing, and there's no example anywhere in the game of any sort of similar idea that would give them some code to work with. Coding a game is not as simple as you write above. If this was just a reskinning of an already-implemented concept (just replace 1 Survivor Insignia with 1 15^50 in the code, and put it in the same layout as the priest of balth), then Anet might just do it. But if you haven't noticed, their focus is definitely not on GW1 right now, and neither is the players'. Even if you had an idea that actually made sense, but required the same amount of work as your idea, it might have had a chance back when GW was new and they had all their resources in the game, but it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell now.

Probability of happening aside, I'll discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of your proposal. Remember that run on Sup Shadow Arts runes the day the update came that made Shadow Form permanently maintainable with a sup only? What if it had been possible for everyone to sell their minor shadow arts runes to the trader, and he'd make more Sup ones? And 10% sundering mods are far more common than minor shadow arts runes. The whole point of a rare rune, or a perfect mod, is that they're RARE, and much more difficult and unlikely to get than a minor rune, or a crap mod. So if all the noobs in istan sold all their 10% sundering mods to the trader, the max ones would become cheap as all hell. Those decimals add up when you have the sheer abundance of crap drops that occur there. +25 HP mods are incredibly common everywhere but pre and noob islands, which means there would be more of them sold to the trader because people won’t farm baby areas just for this, when it’s more profitable to farm kryta even, and your suggestion of the scaled system would have those be relatively high percentages. But the problem is that those cheap max items never actually were dropped. It makes absolutely no sense to have the prices of the rare items depend on the number of crap items sold. Having crap drops count towards creating perfect mods, no matter how small a percentage you propose, is a horrible idea. What if people could sell all their crappy white no req shields to a trader and he'd eventually spawn tormented shields? I'm just taking your idea to the logical extreme to show its absurdity.

Anet purposefully calculates the probability of different things dropping, and this would completely screw with their calculations and their intents. If they wanted max mods to be any more common than they are, they would have given them a higher percentage chance of dropping.

If you get nothing else out of this wall of text, then just understand this. A +10 hp mod is worthless in the player economy. Adding this trader would give worth to something that doesn’t naturally have any. Any economist will tell you that attributing false worth to something is a recipe for economic disaster.

Just my 780 cents (count the words). Ailina 02:44, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

If it's so important for you that the lesser upgrades doesn't count, then all that is needed is to count only the maxed, and the rest of the prices would still depend on the supply of the maxed. Still, the non-maxed upgrades are always worth something. When you identify them, even an +10 one can be worth more than the mere 26 gold merchants usually pay for them, so they will still buy them. You can even sell gray dyes to the dye trader, and common scrolls to the scroll trader, yet they don't sell them. What's important is the type of the item, not the real amount of each one of its variations. The problem is that you think that a +29 and a +30 item should be counted separately, because they have different values, and different drop rates, but doing that would require all different variations to be available, which is much worse, since they are too many, and leaving things as they are would be the worst. Not counting them separately would affect their prices? Yes, of curse, but that's quite irrelevant, because the basics of the trader would be the same: The most used upgrades are not sold to the trader, the least used upgrades are sold to the trader, and the result is that most expensive ones are the most used, which the trader has less because people sell them less to him, anything that keeps that is enough, even if you don't count separately each different variation. And you can't compare an upgrade to an attribute rune, they have upsides and downsides. It could be only comparable to vigor or absorption runes, and yup, it would affect a little if by selling 1,000.000 minor vigor runes you'll get one superior vigor rune, but it's so little that it would be IRRELEVANT, by the time you'll get one that way, you would have got more than 1000 by playing normally. Not even a little spike in statistics. What it's important is to be able to quickly change upgrades in items while in a PvP outpost like with runes, and not having to spend moths searching for an upgrade no one sells because it's prce is not over 5K. The almost non-existan GW economy is not as important as that, there is no actual in-game trade system other than the traders, remember? If there was a Xunlai marketplace or something like that traders won't be necessary, but we don't have that. MithTalk 12:23, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Quick question: if the effect of having the non-max mods helping to create max mods would be "irrelevant", then why bother doing that at all? You also didn't respond to my comment about the coding. Why would they bother writing an entirely new and complicated code for an unnecessary feature that would be largely “irrelevant”?

As for the prices of non-max mods being calculated as a percentage of the price of max mods, that’s simply not at all how an economic system works. The difference between a +28 mod and a +29 mod is virtually nothing, and the difference between a +29 and a +30 is huge, but the ratio between differences is not the same (eg 28:29::6:7, and 29:30::1:10, both of which I just made up on the spot so don’t say that they’re not accurate), so you can’t artifically assign them values that ARE based on them having the same ratio. The prices are simply not naturally linked like that. That’s like suggesting that the price of a Subaru should be a fixed percentage of the price of a Jaguar, because while they are both cars and have the same basic functionality, one is considered “better” and has a much higher price value. So why should the price of Toyotas depend on the price of Jaguars? Their values fluctuate entirely separately, and are not related in any way. (And yes, they are different companies etc. etc., I’m just taking the example to the logical extreme).

Also, even if they were for some reason to do that, where will they get that percentage calculation from? How could they possibly find out what percentage of a +30 mod a +29 is worth? It’s not like there’s any agreed-upon, or even vaguely constant, value, so would you suggest that Anet monitor the player’s trades for months and average them to get the price “ratio” of every single permuation of every single mod? Again, there’s no way they’d put in that amount of effort for something that’s unnecessary. (Incidentally, that would also be impossible to do for all of them, as +10hp mods are completely non-existent in the player market, so there is no way to “find” their “value”). The number the trader offers will differ wildly from the price it would be worth if the trader didn’t exist, because the price of one individual mod simply can’t be calculated as a percentage of a different one. There’s no existing formula, and forcing one in artificially goes against the whole concept of a trader, which is to reflect the actual player economy. Essentially, Anet would be deciding the prices of these mods, which just isn’t the concept of a trader. If you’re proposing a trader like the rune/dye/scroll/mats traders, which was the original intent, then this concept simply doesn’t fit in.

Where did you get your information about the dye and scroll traders? Common scrolls show up in the window when you click sell, but if you try to sell it a message pops up that says “The trader refuses to buy this item”. A gray dye is bought from the merchant for 50 gold, and he buys it back for 25 gold. The trader offers 25 gold for it, always. Which is exactly what I said before: “So with no value, they would only be worth exactly what the merch would buy them for, which is 25g -- exactly the same way that the mats trader will only pay 4g for one wood, like the merch.” So yes, the +10 hp mod has a value, but only to the merchant, like everything else that has supply but no demand.

You said that “The problem is that you think that a +29 and a +30 item should be counted separately, because they have different values, and different drop rates, but doing that would require all different variations to be available, which is much worse, since they are too many, and leaving things as they are would be the worst.” Have you been reading anything I’ve been saying? My whole argument is that the trader should only buy and sell max mods, and that the rest should be left to the player economy. Just like with the common scrolls as I mentioned above: the trader only sells and buys rare scrolls, and any common scrolls are left to the player market. You also said that “What it's[sic] important is to be able to quickly change upgrades in items while in a PvP outpost like with runes, and not having to spend moths searching for an upgrade no one sells because it's prce is not over 5K”. That’s exactly my point. Notice that says absolutely nothing about selling to the trader. If the “important thing” is to be able to buy the runes, and the trader only sells max ones anyway, why does it matter if the trader buys the non-max runes? They won’t be available for you to buy anyway, and when you’re changing in a pvp outpost, you don’t care about selling.

Also, your point about the attribute runes really has nothing to do with anything we’re talking about here, and is also just wrong. There’s a reason the sup death magic rune is worth a couple k while the regular one is 100g: Death magic is pretty much only used for minion masters or necros that otherwise raise minions, and 16 dm is indisputably more important than a mere -75 hp, which can easily be largely mitigated with a sup vigor and maybe some survivor insigs. Same with sup shadow arts runes. No minion master or perma would run with anything less than a superior. However, if I actually took that comment seriously, I would point out that the exact same thing is true for the mods, except it’s money instead of health. A 20% Forget Me Not has the upside of being perfect, but the downside of costing 20k, whereas a 19% mod has the downside of not being perfect, but the upside of being probably 2k at most. Ailina 02:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, maybe the changed the scrolls, but they DID buy them. And the gray dyes are still bought by dye traders, if they didn't changed that too.

What would be irrelevant would be the partial effect of lesser upgrades in prices. But what will be very relevant is being able to make quick changes in a weapon much faster than now. That's th most important thing, and for that a trader is needed, to go along the lines of the the rune trader. Then, the details about how is it done and its effects in the almost non-existan GW economy are secondary and less important.

And as I said, there is no reason for the trader not to boy the non-maxed ones. If them affecting the prices of the rest is so important to you, then all you have to do forget about the increase fractions of the supply an not make them affect such prices. But Buying them or not is not as important. Even if dye traders still buy gray dyes, you won't see gray dyes appearing in their list of supplies. Having their prices based on the prices of maxed ones is enough, so people don't pay too less or too much for them. Traders are also about price control, not only about availability, after all. And unlike gray dies, which appear in the merchant with a fixed price, the lesser upgrades would have no other reference other than the trader. The prices of the maxed ones would only set a maximum price for the lesser by themselves, but if the trader pays more than the merchant in some cases, then we get also a minimum price reference.

Oh, and prices of cars are actually based in each other. When the competition lowers or raises prices, a company will also change its prices too. It's all related. But in that case, they are too different items. In this case, it would be like different market range. Upmarket cars of the same type will always have higher prices. You add CD player, GPS, and some more things, and when the car has 'everythng' it will be the most expensive version. And the prices of the 'lesser' cars will always be related to that price, they will always be less than that price. It won't make any sense to pay less and have ore or vice-versa. Same car, different quality, different prices, but not unrelated prices. It's not like a jaguar and a Toyota. It's like the cheap and most expensive versions of the same model of toyota, one with everything, and then other with less and less stuff until they are the cheapest possible, no way the lesser version will have a price unrelated to the 'maxed one'. MithTalk 13:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) :I’m sorry, but your response failed to answer any of my question or address any of my concerns at all. “the deails about how it is done and its effects in the […] GW economy are secondary and less important”. That’s completely untrue. This won’t have any chance at all to happen if the coding takes more than about a half hour to do. They simply don’t care enough about GW1, and this is completely unimportant to them. And the GW economy is nowhere close to non-existant.

“Dye traders do not offer gray dye. Those can be purchased from regular merchants instead with a fixed price of 50 . Gray dye can however be sold to dye traders for 25 .” -- Dye Trader. You did not respond at all to my point about how that does not increase the supply to the dye trader at all, and how it’s exactly the same as selling to a merchant, which was one of my first points. Also, no matter how many gray dyes you sell to the dye trader, they will never spontaneously create new black dyes, or dyes of any color. Please explain to me how that is different in ANY way than your proposed idea.

Since you’re obviously not reading my writings at all, I’ll readd my point here:

“So with no value, they would only be worth exactly what the merch would buy them for, which is 25g -- exactly the same way that the mats trader will only pay 4g for one wood, like the merch. And we already have a merch for that. What does it matter if they're sold to the merch or to the trader if either way they disappear forever and you get 25g?” That was included twice, and the second time was in bold and included the words “So yes, the +10 hp mod has a value, but only to the merchant, like everything else that has supply but no demand.”. Yet you failed to respond by stubbornly repeating that the dye trader would buy the gray dye, which was exactly what I said, while completely ignoring the problem with that.

Also, you keep repeating that “Having their prices based on the prices of maxed ones is enough, so people don't pay too less or too much for them” and “The prices of the maxed ones would only set a maximum price for the lesser by themselves, but if the trader pays more than the merchant in some cases, then we get also a minimum price reference”. But you never answered how the percentages would be decided. Please explain to me how they would figure out exactly how much of a +30 hp mod a +10 would be worth. Basically, if something has no value to the player market, it shouldn’t influence the trader market in any way.

Please address these concerns.

Btw, I have no idea where you got your information about the scroll traders. They do not, and never have, bought common scrolls. I don't know what you're remembering, but it's just not true. Ailina 21:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Once identified a weapon upgrade can cost up to 400g, just like runes. The percentages would be decided arbitrarily, like many things have been decided before, for example, costs for unlocking items or the price of the equipment bags. That's not for me to decide, I don't manage statistics from the servers. MithTalk 21:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

At least justify your intent to create an entirely unprecedented system by allowing the supply of demand-less imperfect upgrades contribute to the spontaneous creation of perfect upgrades from this "trader". Then we can talk about details.Ailina 01:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and your comment was completely irrelevant, because the "prices" for unlocking runes and buying equipment packs are from the equivalent of a merchant, not a trader. Neither unlocked runes or equipment packs have any value to any npc trader or even merchants (I'm talking about the unlocking of runes, which is what you discussed, not actually having the physical rune itself). So they have absolutely nothing to do with your idea of a trader. In the future, please read over your posts before you click save. Also, try this for inspiration and to keep you looking like a moron. Thanks for all of your insightful and competent responses! Ailina 08:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Trader or Merchant?

I admit I don't know much about the mechanics of it all, but what about basing the proposed weapon upgrade seller off the merchant model rather than the trader model? Endless supply with fixed prices - better mods being more expensive. I never understood the point of the trader model anyway, as can't the game generate as many items as are needed without having to rely on the instability of player-based economics? It's just coding, right? I'm open to learning more about it, though, so feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong. Either way, an upgrade seller would be a great addition to the game, and I hope it gets added eventually. --Nathe 01:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

If the trader pays enough and it's properly advertised, a lot of people will sell the upgrades, filling the first initial stock. Stock is usually only a problem for the most sought upgrades, and in those cases you will easily get them from players. Would you sell an upgrade to a merchant for 25..400, or to a trader for 50..10000? The thing with traders is that the items that not many people bother to sell, are also the items not many people cares to buy, so it balances itself, excepting for the most sought items and when there are some changes that make people get a certain upgrade a lot more, but since the most sought upgrades are the ones most people keep, you can still buy them from other players. MithTalk 16:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)