Black Raven Dragoons

[Grimblast]

I've found the solution to our dust problems! You can melt ectos into tier 6 dust, oh snap!

[Zancarius]

Has the drop rate on ectoplasms increased?

[Grimblast]

Drop rate is still the same as it was. At least we can get rares for melting quite regularly from world boss kills on a daily basis. Not to mention running dungeons and converting dungeon currency to armor and then melting it for ectos as well.

[Zancarius]

Seems kinda MMO-typical: Reduce the drop rate of a rare item and make you have to melt another already rare item to get a better chance at getting the previously non-rare item.

I wonder if they're doing that to control (read: increase) the price of ectos and dust and if so what the motivation for that might be.

[Elade]

Good job Anet. Way to bandage a severed arm. Real pro. =D

[Grimblast]

Took this from today's patch notes:

Items

Globs of Ectoplasm can now be salvaged into Piles of Crystalline Dust. This change should help Globs of Ectoplasm maintain a strong value in the economy and lower the cost of Crystalline Dust.
Master Tuning Crystals, Master Maintenance Oil, and Superior Sharpening Stone recipes now take more Piles of Crystalline Dust to craft. This change is to help these consumables maintain a high value with the new influx of dust.

Spot on.

[Zancarius]

So what they're doing is artificially keeping the economy propped up in some measurable form to make sure people pay money for gold.

Sounds like they're taking a trick out of Bernanke's book.