Guild Wars 2

Really, can you guys do something about it? Rounded up its currently $5 for every 1g you want through gems.

How is that too much? 1g is a fairly large sum of money in GW2.

Yes, they can do something, but they wont since they are making a lot of money by keeping gold scarce and selling gems for gold (albeit indirectly).

Actually its a bargain.

Most people can earn $5 IRL much faster than they can earn 1 gold in game.

I have a level 80 wearing 50% magic find and focusing completely on making gold(by playing not trading) I doubt I make more than a gold an hour. people who are leveling up make gold MUCH slower than that.

ANet isn’t in charge of how much gold gems go for. The gem to gold price is based on supply and demand. The more gems people buy with $ and sell on the market the less in game gold they go for. Same things go for the reverse, the less people who are buying gems the more expensive they will become on the TC. If ou buy gems for the soul purpose of making gold in game then don’t complain. You could go to one of those super safe gold selling sites and get 100 gold for like 250 bucks! I doubt you’ll even have to worry about your account being hacked. ;-)

Yes, but Anet is in charge of the gold flow in game, by keeping it scarce they give players the incentive to trade gems for gold.

While the exchange rate is given by supply and demand (and remember we are taking this on faith no one is regulating Anet to stay true to the system) by keeping gold scarce it becomes more valuable than gems. Since Anet is a gold seller (again indirectly) they profit more this way.

This is not judgmental, its just a fact.

Wait a bit. As gold enters the market, the exchange rate will become more favorable for gold-buyers.

mulch.2586:

Wait a bit. As gold enters the market, the exchange rate will become more favorable for gold-buyers.

yes and no.

As more gold enters, more people will afford to buy gems (and less people will be inclined to exchange gems for gold).

So lets say that right now you have the following rates:

10s =1 gem (buying gems with gold)
1 gems = 5s (selling gold for gems)

If suddenly there was a influx in gold then gold becomes less valuable (while gems appreciate).

50s = 1 gem (buying gems with gold)
1 gems= 25s (selling gold for gems)

Now this is a very simplistic way of looking at it there are many other factors into play. The point being that because the gold is scarce there is an incentive to exchange gems for gold, bringing the rate down while Anet reaps the profits of all the sanctioned gold selling.

Should the average player care? not really the cosmetic upgrades (cultural armor for example) are just that… cosmetic.

Its only bad when it affects the ability to play the game (like if you are broke and can’t repair your armor) hopefully it will never come to that.

The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<→gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.

Yep, yawg is spot on. That plus the listing fee and 10/15% (forget how much) cut they take on in-game TP transactions… it’s keeping the poor poor =)

I think buying gold with gems is supposed to be more of a desperate last resort anyways. They can’t let it be too easy to buy gold anyways or it’ll destroy it’s value and we’ll end up using ectos for currency again or something.

What gets me is every ten minutes or less we see an add that offers us to buy gold at the price of 2.50 per unit. The spamming does not stop so one can only assume that people are buying and using gold bought out side of the game.

I recently bought 50.00 worth of gems in game and traded the entire amount for just around 10 gold. Those people buying gold outside of the game are getting 2x the gold as I am. The trading post does not care where the gold came from the prices go up and come down based on what is being bought and sold. The outside gold upsets the economy greatly so if you can not get under control then you should lower your prices on gems so those of us abiding by your rules are not getting shafted by those that are not.

@Venomlaced those people who buy gold from outside sources are at high risk of losing it, as every gold-seller transaction is logged in the mail database. So maybe you spent twice as much buying gold, but you’ll not risk a ban from it.

Time will tell if ANet has any interest in fighting outside real-money gold sellers. With their cash shop, I suspect they may, unlike other games (say WoW) where they tacitly approved gold/plat/adena/etc buying, if only to defend their income stream from gem sales.

“The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<?gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.”

The Spread is there to avoid creating and infinite loop of gold. The spread is not the problem (its just another gold sink), its gold scarcity as soon as gold becomes more accesible then gems will become more valuable than gold.

“Yep, yawg is spot on. That plus the listing fee and 10/15% (forget how much) cut they take on in-game TP transactions… it’s keeping the poor poor =)”

The TP fee + TP tax is just a gold sink, again this makes gold more scarce so Anet can keep gold more valuable and profit more from the gold selling.

Let’s call it the Farmville model:

You want your barn built (in GW is cultural armor) so you log in daily to water your crops, gather vegetables, etc to get those points (can’t remember what they give you) to get the barn (in GW you kill mobs, do events, etc to get gold for the armor). By purposefully keeping the progression slow (scarce gold in GW) Farmville gives you the incentive to just pay to get that barn built today (in GW exchange gems for gold to buy that armor).

Now again this is not judgamental is just a business model same as all those F2P games out there. Thankfully GW2 is a little more ethical and all those items that you want are purely comestic so it doesn’t hinder you ability to play just your ability to feel “unique” and to rush toguh content, if at any moment the scarcity of gold prevents you from playing then it becomes a problem.

mulch.2586:

@Venomlaced those people who buy gold from outside sources are at high risk of losing it, as every gold-seller transaction is logged in the mail database. So maybe you spent twice as much buying gold, but you’ll not risk a ban from it.

I think you are looking at the smaller issue here. 1 person getting banned from buying gold from an outside source does not stop the in game economy from being eschewed by the millions of gold that is being bought and used at a much lower rate than can be legally bought in game. What I’m saying is the problem is not the gold buyers its the gold sellers and Anet either needs to step up their game and ban the spammers more quickly or lower their prices on gold so those of us that are not breaking rules and buying gold their way are not getting shafted by the inflated prices the cheap illegal gold has created.

ANet can easily shaft the gold sellers right back. Just enter a temporary sale for Gems, say 50% off for a limited time.

I know I’d blow ~30-50 EUR to gems right there and then.

I agree with you Tom the gold sellers have already bought gold form players at a certain rate if Anet lowered their price on gold for long enough the gold sellers would loose a considerable chunk they have already invested. Sure they could sit on their gold until ANet raised the price again but during that time they are making nothing. Lowered gold prices would hurt the illegal sellers.

Venomlaced.8273:

I agree with you Tom the gold sellers have already bought gold form players at a certain rate if Anet lowered their price on gold for long enough the gold sellers would loose a considerable chunk they have already invested. Sure they could sit on their gold until ANet raised the price again but during that time they are making nothing. Lowered gold prices would hurt the illegal sellers.

And if what ANet says is true that they will not generate gems or gold into the game from thin air (in essence every gem on the market is bought with real money and every gold gotten from gem sales is player generated) then they would not really even devaluate in-game gold.

Perfect solution. Do these irregularly and without warning and the gold-sellers will soon discover it’s too risky to do business with GW2 gold.

i made 10 g in 1 day so i earned 50 $?

Quote function missing again…

@Urejt, that’s not how economy works. Contact the gold sellers and see how much they are willing to pay. If they sell gold at 2.50 USD per 1g I think you’re lucky if you could get 15 USD for your 10g. Now I don’t know what you do for a living, but 15 USD for a day’s “work” (even considering it’s a pretty awesome job compared to many others) isn’t that much.

Anet could fix the issue at any time, they’re essentially the Federal Reserve and set the exchange rate of gems>gold. If Anet set the rate to be more competitive, say 100-150gems = 1gold, then even with their existing -30-40% gem-to-gold conversion rate, they’d still be right in line with outside sellers. $10 would be about 5-7g, and very reasonable.

You may think so, I may think so, but we do not have their sales numbers.

APB is a game I love to play, and their weapons cost 30-50 dollars each and they offer little to no advantage to top tier guns you can earn in game, but they keep selling them at that price because people like me spend 800-1200 dollars a year.

Many complain price are too high, but the sales may show a different story.

Shayde, according to what we have heard from Anet, they do not control the gem/gold exchange rate, but instead it’s freely fluctuated by supply and demand.

Gold per gem will only go up as the game continues

Cancer.9065:

Yes, but Anet is in charge of the gold flow in game, by keeping it scarce they give players the incentive to trade gems for gold.

While the exchange rate is given by supply and demand (and remember we are taking this on faith no one is regulating Anet to stay true to the system) by keeping gold scarce it becomes more valuable than gems. Since Anet is a gold seller (again indirectly) they profit more this way.

This is not judgmental, its just a fact.

It is a fact in theory but let’s see your evidence that ANet is keeping gold “scarce”. That’s a specific term with a specific meaning and it implies intent and you keep repeating it so you clearly think this is purposeful.

Inflation will happen as more people level and it’s going to cause gold to be less valuable. Them NOT having gold sinks would be detrimental to their profit margin.

Yawg.1294:

The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<->gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.

That’s not a problem. That’s how ANet stays in business.

Don’t want to buy gems for real money? Then earn the gold to purchase them, just like I and many other people are.

Don’t want to wait? Then buy them (just like I did initially to get bank/bag slots).

Ethics.4519:

Yep, yawg is spot on. That plus the listing fee and 10/15% (forget how much) cut they take on in-game TP transactions… it’s keeping the poor poor =)

What keeps the poor poor is a lack of education.

Just playing the game one cannot stay poor unless they keep making poor decisions that cost them.

Listing fees aren’t going away and neither are transaction taxes so we need to learn how to play around it – IOW, make wiser purchasing/selling decisions.

Cancer.9065:

“The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<?gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.”

The Spread is there to avoid creating and infinite loop of gold. The spread is not the problem (its just another gold sink), its gold scarcity as soon as gold becomes more accesible then gems will become more valuable than gold.

“Yep, yawg is spot on. That plus the listing fee and 10/15% (forget how much) cut they take on in-game TP transactions… it’s keeping the poor poor =)”

The TP fee + TP tax is just a gold sink, again this makes gold more scarce so Anet can keep gold more valuable and profit more from the gold selling.

Let’s call it the Farmville model:

You want your barn built (in GW is cultural armor) so you log in daily to water your crops, gather vegetables, etc to get those points (can’t remember what they give you) to get the barn (in GW you kill mobs, do events, etc to get gold for the armor). By purposefully keeping the progression slow (scarce gold in GW) Farmville gives you the incentive to just pay to get that barn built today (in GW exchange gems for gold to buy that armor).

Now again this is not judgamental is just a business model same as all those F2P games out there. Thankfully GW2 is a little more ethical and all those items that you want are purely comestic so it doesn’t hinder you ability to play just your ability to feel “unique” and to rush toguh content, if at any moment the scarcity of gold prevents you from playing then it becomes a problem.

Gold is “scarce” because the game just came out and people haven’t generated wealth. ANet will always have gold sinks to combat inflation. Given enough time the “scarc[ity]” of gold will be a non-issue… although it isn’t an issue now.

Shayde.2564:

Anet could fix the issue at any time, they’re essentially the Federal Reserve and set the exchange rate of gems>gold. If Anet set the rate to be more competitive, say 100-150gems = 1gold, then even with their existing -30-40% gem-to-gold conversion rate, they’d still be right in line with outside sellers. $10 would be about 5-7g, and very reasonable.

And then outside sellers would undercut them again. Now what?

Venomlaced.8273:

What gets me is every ten minutes or less we see an add that offers us to buy gold at the price of 2.50 per unit. The spamming does not stop so one can only assume that people are buying and using gold bought out side of the game.

I recently bought 50.00 worth of gems in game and traded the entire amount for just around 10 gold. Those people buying gold outside of the game are getting 2x the gold as I am. The trading post does not care where the gold came from the prices go up and come down based on what is being bought and sold. The outside gold upsets the economy greatly so if you can not get under control then you should lower your prices on gems so those of us abiding by your rules are not getting shafted by those that are not.

The difference is, you’ll never be banned. They might.

Ramza, that brings up a good point.

Black market. That is why illicit goods are more valuable – there’s inherently more risk involved. You can get better value per dollar but there’s a risk you’ll get banned.

So while you may be getting “shafted” by their prices you aren’t getting banned. You aren’t willing to risk it, they are.

no. this situation makes people buy from gold farmers, which gets more accounts hacked and banned, which makes anet put more people on the ‘hacked accts’ jobs, which takes away from devs to remove bugs, which takes away from the bot removal team cuz they take gear from events we need to sell on tp, to have a half assed chance to make gold in the first place. anet is creating this problem, we are just dealing with it the best we can.

Dishconnected.8360:

Shayde.2564:

Anet could fix the issue at any time, they’re essentially the Federal Reserve and set the exchange rate of gems>gold. If Anet set the rate to be more competitive, say 100-150gems = 1gold, then even with their existing -30-40% gem-to-gold conversion rate, they’d still be right in line with outside sellers. $10 would be about 5-7g, and very reasonable.

And then outside sellers would undercut them again. Now what?

by then gold farmers would have to sell gold so cheap it wouldnt be worth their time, and not many complaints by the players feeling the need to go to them. THATS what.

keelaunaw.3285:

Dishconnected.8360:

Shayde.2564:

Anet could fix the issue at any time, they’re essentially the Federal Reserve and set the exchange rate of gems>gold. If Anet set the rate to be more competitive, say 100-150gems = 1gold, then even with their existing -30-40% gem-to-gold conversion rate, they’d still be right in line with outside sellers. $10 would be about 5-7g, and very reasonable.

And then outside sellers would undercut them again. Now what?

by then gold farmers would have to sell gold so cheap it wouldnt be worth their time, and not many complaints by the players feeling the need to go to them. THATS what.

If someone is complaining about having to go to gold sellers… that is their problem, not mine. If they are taking that risk that is of their own accord. They want to take the risk for the reward then do it. No crying whe the banhammer strikes.

I agree that 3rd party gold selling needs to be controlled as ANet wants that revenue… the means by which they are going to accomplish this is up to them. They are not going to willingly cut off their nose to spite their face by reducing their revenue stream from sales they already make unless it can be justified that move is actually going to be profitable.

As they aren’t doing it, they have either decided it isn’t profitable to do so, they haven’t decided/are in the process of doing it or haven’t thought of it at all/are not making any moves. I doubt the latter.

keelaunaw.3285:

no. this situation makes people buy from gold farmers, which gets more accounts hacked and banned, which makes anet put more people on the ‘hacked accts’ jobs, which takes away from devs to remove bugs, which takes away from the bot removal team cuz they take gear from events we need to sell on tp, to have a half assed chance to make gold in the first place. anet is creating this problem, we are just dealing with it the best we can.

Nice slippery slope there.

People buying from gold farmers is their own problem. The solution is to have more patience or risk willing to get banned/hacked. shrug

This is a double edge blade here, increase the gold people buy and more people are going to take advantage of spending real money on the game (which does provide some real advantages for gear/weapon etc buying) but not to the point that it inbalances the game. The other side of it is seeing the constant spam of chinese gold farmers selling 4-5x more gold for the same price. Granted some of it may be legit/illegit attained, it gets rid of the incentive for players wanting to legimately purchase gold/gems from anet versus 3rd party. I’m not advocating buying chinese gold, as I wouldn’t risk my account being banned, but about $5 for 1 gold (4k gem pack for $50) is a bit ridiculous. When you figure in at lvl 80 waypoints and armor repair goes way up, that cost doesn’t go far.

Solution to devalue some of it? Offer gem deals, such as 50% off sales or double the gems sales. During that time people would purchase more and feel their actual money and time was more valuable. Of course this affects some of the gold2gem and gem2gold exchange, but the market itself balances out over time.

Soutalgon.3827:

Really, can you guys do something about it? Rounded up its currently $5 for every 1g you want through gems.

exactly. i bought 1600 gems the other day, checked the exchange rate, a lil over 4g. so twenty bucks for 4g.

heres the skinny for the schlub off the street:
i have played a few f2p games, most arent very graphically appealing as much as this (and i know this isnt a f2p game im comparing economies), but when it comes down to money and what you get for it that makes a big difference in whether or not you keep players. i can go to, say, eq2, and buy a permanent flaming whatever mount for less than $15 in their currency. here in gw2, to buy the racial shoulder armor, ONE PIECE, would cost me about $100, would have to exchange gems for gold, then get it.

i doubt i will need any more gems. that 1600 i got was a 1x purchase. and i certainly wont go to a gold farmer. so this is what will happen; either the gold becomes at least somewhat easier to get in this game (then jack up the price of that gear by more gold, keep it hard to get), or it becomes overrun by gold farmers and bots and there will be no one left to give a kitten how cool and innovative it could have been. thats a fact boys and girls, its happened before.

DarkSider.1079:

This is a double edge blade here, increase the gold people buy and more people are going to take advantage of spending real money on the game (which does provide some real advantages for gear/weapon etc buying) but not to the point that it inbalances the game. The other side of it is seeing the constant spam of chinese gold farmers selling 4-5x more gold for the same price. Granted some of it may be legit/illegit attained, it gets rid of the incentive for players wanting to legimately purchase gold/gems from anet versus 3rd party. I’m not advocating buying chinese gold, as I wouldn’t risk my account being banned, but about $5 for 1 gold (4k gem pack for $50) is a bit ridiculous. When you figure in at lvl 80 waypoints and armor repair goes way up, that cost doesn’t go far.

I can make 1g in less than one day. Why on earth would I pay real money for that? Oof. Makes no sense.

Solution to devalue some of it? Offer gem deals, such as 50% off sales or double the gems sales. During that time people would purchase more and feel their actual money and time was more valuable. Of course this affects some of the gold2gem and gem2gold exchange, but the market itself balances out over time.

You already have the solution – it’s called patience.

keelaunaw.3285:

Soutalgon.3827:

Really, can you guys do something about it? Rounded up its currently $5 for every 1g you want through gems.

exactly. i bought 1600 gems the other day, checked the exchange rate, a lil over 4g. so twenty bucks for 4g.

heres the skinny for the schlub off the street:
i have played a few f2p games, most arent very graphically appealing as much as this (and i know this isnt a f2p game im comparing economies), but when it comes down to money and what you get for it that makes a big difference in whether or not you keep players. i can go to, say, eq2, and buy a permanent flaming whatever mount for less than $15 in their currency. here in gw2, to buy the racial shoulder armor, ONE PIECE, would cost me about $100, would have to exchange gems for gold, then get it.

i doubt i will need any more gems. that 1600 i got was a 1x purchase. and i certainly wont go to a gold farmer. so this is what will happen; either the gold becomes at least somewhat easier to get in this game (then jack up the price of that gear by more gold, keep it hard to get), or it becomes overrun by gold farmers and bots and there will be no one left to give a kitten how cool and innovative it could have been. thats a fact boys and girls, its happened before.

In 2 days of gameplay I could have made that 4g on my level 65 Ranger and saved myself $20.

I must be doing something different that allows me to be successful in this game. I think it’s patience.

They don’t control the prices.

I’m personally rather surprised that people will pay $5 for 1 gold, but that’s apparently what the market will bear. There’s clearly a high demand for gold from people who cannot mine it effectively on their own.

Part of the reason the gem store gold price remains high is a lack of enticing gem offers from the gem store. Someone has to want to buy the gems for gold, and while there are a handful of nice things there (bag slots spring immediately to mind) there just isn’t much to entice me to dump a lot of excess gold for gems.

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

Venomlaced.8273:

What gets me is every ten minutes or less we see an add that offers us to buy gold at the price of 2.50 per unit. The spamming does not stop so one can only assume that people are buying and using gold bought out side of the game.

I recently bought 50.00 worth of gems in game and traded the entire amount for just around 10 gold. Those people buying gold outside of the game are getting 2x the gold as I am. The trading post does not care where the gold came from the prices go up and come down based on what is being bought and sold. The outside gold upsets the economy greatly so if you can not get under control then you should lower your prices on gems so those of us abiding by your rules are not getting shafted by those that are not.

The difference is, you’ll never be banned. They might.

Banning 1 player for buying illegal gold is not going to solve the problem Anet needs to hurt the gold sellers because as long as its profitable for them to sell gold the in game economy is going to be askew. Lowering Anets prices to meet or beat the gold sellers price hurts them because they have already bought the gold from players at a certain rate.

It hurts them short term, but once they’re acquiring their gold cheaper it will stop mattering again.

Also, ANet can’t lower the price by too much without it encouraging rampant inflation, which they obviously don’t want to do.

The gold to gem exchange rate has essentially no effect on inflation.

TBH, that is kind of too expensive, actually.

I can not see how this would matter unless you are a gold farmer planning to use gems for gold and resale the gold IRL…other then that it should not matter. The things in the game are so super cheap you do not need more then 2-3 on you at all times really and with that you are considered rich by Tyrian standards.

If you don’t think it’s worth trading in your gems for gold, then use them for other stuff like BLC keys or salvage kits or whatever. Those are really helpful for earning gold in game.

I guess if you’re the type who doesn’t feel like you have time for farming and playing the game then idk… tough luck? Most people who say they “don’t have time” actually mean that they’d rather spend a few hours per day watching TV.

edit: currently it’s better to buy gold though. 5 bucks for 1 gold is good.

Wait what?The OP is playing a game in which the development company sanctions the ability to trade cash for gold, and he is crying because it is not enough?

Honestly, instead of being thankful for something that is a bannable offense in most games, you complain about it here. Reads to be pretty ingratfull.

Never thought I’d see people complaining because a game wasn’t pay to win.

How is that too much? 1g is a fairly large sum of money in GW2.

I’ll tell you how, 1g is a sinlge siege golem.

some weapons cost 80g or $400.