Guild Wars 2

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

I on the other hand say would make weapons years after WoW came out. I was still selling mid grade swords and axes for a profit. A profit isn’t a loss.

Making money with crafting is a WoW thing. You know the main reason you make money with crafting in that game? Scarcity. Because each server has a separate economy. They make money because since there’s a smaller pool of players who can make the item, they can charge more. Scarcity allows them to profit.

I find it ironic that there are people in this thread saying it’s a bad economy because there isn’t enough scarcity, while a few posts up there are people claiming the economy is bad because there’s too much scarcity. I guess we only want scarcity when it benefits us?

Kam, ok let say this is the real world which everyone seems to be talking about.

If company X makes something for say $5 it then sells it for at least $10.

Where say the Guild Wars 2 model is :

Player makes Sword for 3g, but it will only sell in the TP for say 1.5g. Why craft?

WoW lasted as long as it has do to that economy difference. It is Fun. One poster had a good point. There is more money pits and not enough money generators. There needs to be a balance. I am not sure if you work retail or any personal business like that in a large town or city, but I do the customers demand certain things. We meet those demands to make more money.

Anet is a business. The upside is there is a sucker born every day. Sure people will buy it, but how many will continue if they feel the point is a bit narrow. There are more then one kind of people. There are the people that love to just grind through a game. There are the people that love to struggle (mainly rich people trying to feel what it is to be poor).
There are people that like to play the market.
There are people that are in a little of most of those, but really don’t care to feel poor.

If it were just me saying the economy is bad then I would accept that in a heart beat. Yet, if you read post after post. There is a problem.

Those that worship Anet currently will just look to say the economy is fine.

However, you can’t dismiss that there are people voicing their displeasure with the economy.

Almost everything in the TP now is so low and there is so much of it that it isn’t worth selling hardly anything to the TP. However, the vendor prices are to low to make anything really off anything. So you only make what an item is valued by the vendors now.

I am guessing your pretty well off Kam. I can’t see you being poor.

It is like I pointed out. They want to sell expansion packs to as many people as possible to make the most amount of money. There are those that will remember that economic experience. My wife really doesn’t want to play. She hardly could afford decent gear at her level. I on the other hand have been always a person that will go ore farming.

Ore and Wood is the only money makers, but that is now starting to drop as well.

If this was a real world economy it would be called a depression.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

The point I was making is simple a good flowing economy makes people like me want to play. Where a bad economy makes me not want to.

Guild Wars 2 is competing against many other MMO’s. It makes more sense to make the players/ people paying bills happy. I know me and my wife bought Every Guild Wars title out there, but this is the last. We loved the Guild Wars 1 Necro. The Necro wasn’t that great this time around. Guild Wars 1 economy sucked, but was fine at the time.

However, we have since played other games. I have played some good and some very bad.

I know it sounds strange, but it is fun as a real poor person to have money even if not real. Yet, it isn’t that fun to feel as broke as in real life.

Also, if you want to go real world model here. Detroit has more people leaving the coming do to a really bad economy. I know my entire guild along with friends and my wife have all stopped playing the game simply do to the economy. It plays into the fun. We like to craft, but not craft to lose money. It costs so much just to craft then you put it in the TP for -2g because no one will buy it.

I on the other hand say would make weapons years after WoW came out. I was still selling mid grade swords and axes for a profit. A profit isn’t a loss.

It seems you lose at every angle when it comes to gold in game aside just buying it with gems.

I had done better then my wife, but I really did a lot of mining and tree cutting. Which seems one of few ways to make money on a consistent basis.

We will not be buying any expansions since it isn’t fun. We will likely buy games coming out that show themselves as being fun. If however say Guild Wars 2 turned around and started being better with a decent economy. Then I would be fine with that. I still play here and there, but my wife refuses to play. Heck, I have offered her 3g to play. However, that is a days earnings. So it in turn is decreasing what fun it is to play the game. I at one time wanted to be a person to unlock all the dye colors and all the stuff with only buying a small amount of gems to exchange for gold.

I see some people don’t like what I have to say, but I am not on any band wagon. I like to ride on my own. I think for myself. Yet, I do see tons of people and known even more people that have stopped and won’t play for a lot of reasons. The reason that tops them all is the economy.

first off there is some problems with some prices in TP in my oppinion tho given its free market its not a single buyer that sets the price niegher a seller, its supply and demand(the more people what something the more people sell it for) tho this is off topic.

from what i can hear you want to earn gold and loads of it and that is possible also,
tho the econmy in GW2 is very healty(repaing cost a 1-12 silvers(cant remember what total broken set of armor cost to repair)) you should be earning more then that by just killing mobs around the world or in WvW without selling anything on TP,
and looking at the value off repairing and what you earn this game is more realistic then many others(it even started in the same standard of value on gold as WoW or close to) tho just because you dont have a hell of gold you can still have a hell of silver

and i remember from wow the point when 1-2k gold where alot and at the point where i got it i felt poor realy poor as the standard then where 5-10k and that is what you want to fell poor with the 2k gold instead off fealing poor with the 2gold(what is the diffrence in that)

and to the post above, crafting can be made much more liked if there where diffrent skins in each armor class at x level and makeing them harder to to get and ill eat my hat on that wow did not last alone on the AH in wow far from, my bet would be the Raids and PvP areans with the always comming new content part meaning new raids and new gear tread mills to walk

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

Kam, ok let say this is the real world which everyone seems to be talking about.

If company X makes something for say $5 it then sells it for at least $10.

Where say the Guild Wars 2 model is :

Player makes Sword for 3g, but it will only sell in the TP for say 1.5g. Why craft?

So you’re saying you should ALWAYS be able to turn a profit when you craft, regardless of supply/demand curves?

If you turn a profit from crafting, everyone will do it. Supply for items that turn a profit go up, demand goes down. Prices go down. Suddenly you’re not profiting. Not because of some evil or poorly designed market, but because of natural process of supply and demand. I wasn’t paying attention to the market at release, but I would wager that this is EXACTLY what happened near the beginning of the game. Crafting was probably profitable, but once supply became flooded, the value of crafted items went down.

Why is this wrong? Why should crafting be a constant immutable money maker? Why should players have a work around to supply and demand? If you could always make money from crafting, why would anyone do anything else?

And I would also like to point out it is possible to make money from crafting. Here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pgiuWEqRKA

Because the truth is you can make money with crafting. The opportunities are rare because again, crafted items are subject to supply and demand, like anything else. But opportunities are there.

The problem is every day those possibilities lower. The trouble is to even make a T-3 item is you need to be a dungeon runner. If you don’t like it. You can’t get the materials to make those items.

They are competing against other game manufactures including Blizzard. I never thought I would be on the side of WoW or Blizzard, but their economy being split up does work.

WoW lasted because it was Fun. I know a ton of people that loved the crafting. A good friend enchanted items while standing outside the AH. They got the materials he got a bit of gold and they got a stronger item.

I made money often by mining ore. I did do weaponsmithing and armorsmithing. I maxed out both and often made a decent amount of money.

I had another friend who sold bags.

We all did this for profit. 90% of what I make and look through the recipes isn’t worth crafting unless for the sole purpose to craft.

We were one big crafting guild. GW2 turned out to be a crafters worst nightmare. I have a friend who went back to Tera which is subscription based.

Why? She found Tera’s economy to be better. She only bought it to play with me in our guild. We all keep in touch through facebook and email, but we have yet to find that one game that fills that need since WoW.

The thing with WoW is the graphics. My guild and friends largely came out of Aion, WoW, and GW1. If a game comes out that has good graphics and is fun for all kinds. That game will win. GW2 makes me sad. My wife and I had a lot of expectations for the game. Anet let us down. However, my wife and I stand on the platform of we don’t like to RP as being poor. We are that in real life.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

However, my wife and I stand on the platform of we don’t like to RP as being poor. We are that in real life.

Huh this makes me really think. This statement reflects gw2 so well.

If you lose money crafting, you are crafting the wrong things. There are plenty of recipes which craft and sell for more than their component cost, even accounting for the 15% tax. These recipes vary in profitability, and sometimes drift to no longer being profitable, but when they do, others become profitable. You simply need to pay attention to prices.
I can max most crafting professions without making more than a handful of items that don’t sell for a profit.

I agree that there is no sense of oportunity in GW2 economy (TP). But its not problem of the game design. The GW2 economy and TP is the best I’ve seen in any mmorpg
The problem is external. Its those sites like guildwarstrade.com, gw2spidy.com
I admire the people who did that but it kinda destroys the oportunity to make some money for me on TP
Like crafting… 90% of all goods all proffesions can craft are unprofitable to sell on TP because the mats are more expensive
I other games I always found a decent way to make money on TP
In GW2 its very hard because thanks to those sites I’ve mentioned everyone knows everything about the market so yes there is no oportunity or very little oportunity.

Meh… I wonder about this… Not because I’m so great at playing the TP because I know that I’m so terrible at playing the TP. There is so much focus on precursors in these discussions and controlling markets. Mr. Smith is welcome to correct me, but I firmly believe that there is a market that you are missing out on. Simply put, that’s buying goods from and selling goods to people like me. Let me tell you a bit about myself:

I’ve been playing off and on since September. I have one level 80 with a number of exotics… I have a few level 5x alts, and a few lower. I play somewhere between 4-20 hours a week, so I don’t generate a huge amount of cash. I generally recognize something of worth when I see it, but I don’t see it often. I used to use something similar to GW2Spidy to try to play with crafting mats, but I stopped. Now I just sell the suckers for short term gain. When I do see something valuable (such as an Abyss dye), I typically look at in terms of a short term investment. I am willing to liquidate quickly to get cash in my hands for gearing/playing. I am the person out there who is saying “take my money” or “give me money for my goods”. The only tool I use to assess value is the current buy/sell order. I sell at a buy order if it is not ridiculously (<90%) below sell order. Otherwise, I try to find a comfortable place in between. That is, a place where I’m comfortable getting value for my good, and where you’re comfortable getting value for your investment.

So, I challenge you… If you are looking for opportunity, “take advantage” of the significant casual player base. Look for medium price-range items that are going to be accessible to folks whose focus is gearing and funding their game play (WP, etc). Those are going to be your sweet spot for “good deals” and “opportunity.”

I just finished the PvE part of world completion (somewhere around 90% now) and kill a dragon now and then, no farming, no dungeons, not “playing the TP”. Considering what I spent on equipment, travelling and repairs and what I have left now, I made ~100g just by selling crap to the vendor and other items on the TP without putting much effort in it. Doesn’t make me rich, but I can afford anything I need. Except a precursor or all other items for legendaries – which I don’t really “need” and which would require more effort. I still have a load of T6 mats on the bank though. If you’re actually playing the game and gather/chop/mine everything in your way, there’s no way you could end up “poor”. There’s no “bad economy”, just players unwilling to do the math.

Personally, I feel there are too few ways to make gold in GW2. Most of which focus on high level content (farming Orr DEs, CoF) or playing the TP. I know in my case I cannot play “my” way and make gold. Alts, map completion, and non-Orrian DEs simply aren’t that profitable.

Unfortunately, prices keep skyrocketing, but my income has not increased hardly at all (much like real life) since I first began playing in September.

I’m accustomed to almost effortlessly accumulating gold in other MMOs (largely through gathering and selling materials), which allowed me to buy nice things not only for myself but for my friends as well. However, very little in GW2 has value. As a result, my account is very bare bones. I have no upgrades other than character slots and the only “fun” things I’ve purchased are dyes for less than 1s.

I understand there needs to be some pressure on players to purchase gems, but that should be limited to enticing them with store items, not because making gold is so difficult (in comparison to inflation and outside of very limited playstyles) that people have to start considering outright buying gold for items that don’t cost gems.

I really think the nerf hammer and bot bans have a huge impact on the average day to day player.

Everyone knows that bot bans cause a dramatic decrease in the supply at the TP. But also, I think the nerfs that come along with these bans tend to make acquiring these resources in game harder for a player. This causes an even bigger decrease in supply.

An average player should be able to log on for a couple hours, play any aspect of the game they wish to play, and feel like they have gained a little something for their time. The nerfs and DR really hit hard. They seem to think it is an X-File level conspiracy, but the truth of the matter is the drops from playing are really not where they should be.

This could be intentionaly on the designer’s part to combat BOTs, or it may just be an unintentional buggy side effect.

When I can log into an area like Malchor’s Leap for the first time in days, and immediately start piling up porous bones, it is ridiculous. Forty five minutes in Malchor’s Leap, and I’ll have blues and a few greens to show for it?

A player likes to feel like they are getting ahead or making progress. If they are barely making gold everytime they play, yet inflation sees the cost of everything going up, the player feels stagnant. A player should feel like he/she is making slow/steady progress everytime they play. Not feel like they are wasting an hour or two to end up in a worse position than when they started.

I don’t think the economy as a whole sucks. I just think DR and the nerf hammer is hitting the average player base real hard. Sure, it makes it harder for BOTs but it makes it REALLY harder for players. And I really believe DR and the loot drop rate is boinked, but that is an entirely different discussion.

You’re argument does not make economic sense.

You want the company to make the npc vendors pay more for your items. This in turn would lead to a larger money supply. Most people use their coins to purchase something, or invest it into the TP to reap profits.

So increasing how much money you get out of npc vendors really does not help you. It would increase demand for items, therefore your wealth could either be the same or it would shrink.

I am by no means rich in GW2, but I don’t find the economy punishing me for it. If I wanted a legendary I would farm for it. My estimation is it would take me about 2 months to get that go or less. In the real world, I want things. It takes time.

I know GW2 stated that the game isn’t meant to be a grindfest. And it really isn’t except for certain items. And some times I feel like I have no real need to accrue coins. All but one of my 80 characters has a full set of exotics. The stat differences for ascended gear isn’t great enough to make me feel uncompetitive to players who have it.

I literally farmed all I needed in coins/mats for my full exotics on one character in a matter of a day. It’s a small price to pay…

The question I would ask you is, Why do you feel poor?

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

Really? scamming? Its neither deceptive or fraudlent, for it to be, I would have to activly influence the sellers idea of the price, which was never something I even hinted to in this post.. Its not scamming, or “borderland” scamming as you call it.

As for this “superior” system that protect players, really? how does it protect players? for it to protect players stuff like spidy would have to be built into the game so you couldnt possibly be wrong about the prices you sold at.

As for exploiting players, what makes you think this is not happening already? just in a slightly diffrent way, more subtle if you like, precursors is a perfect example of sellers exploiting the players “need” for a item.

Infact you could argue that trading by nature is all about exploiting others people needs, wants, lack of time, etcetc

Edit: Aztex, good points.

and Ohoni, I might agree with you except fact is you CAN make more money sitting in lion arch playing the tp, IF you got a very specific skillset, this limits the general populations ability to profit, while greatly rewarding those with that skillset.

Infact you could say that the current system plays right into the hands of shady characters, if you catch my drift.

I would like nothing more then being able to play the game to make a profit, but as it is its just not logical, the amount of gold you can make from farming is so limited due to the heavy DR or RNG that if you want to get ANYWHERE in the game, TP is THE option.

Ah sorry, it was borderline (I was typing this during work on my ipad lol) trading by nature is only exploiting others if the customer wasn’t fully informed what they’re buying. i.e. if you try sell an item which is obviously not it’s lowest value on the market but claim it is, that is borderline scamming to me (though it technically my not be, you could argue it is the customers fault who didn’t check the best price)

I really don’t see the argument of making money off TP by sitting there for days to days. With most investments, it’s not a short term investment, it’s not as simple as buying a bulk of stuff and then artificially increasing the price and then dumping it back out. The market is huge and will immediately correct for this. In fact, there are only a limited number of items on the market which can do this and sometimes you will need to coordinate these kind of actions with other people if you truly want to profit. Most real profit made on TP is by basic flipping, or medium term investments. This by no means require you to sit in tp for a long time, 30 mins at MOST is sufficient.

I notice above that several people try to justify that because of the LOW amount of gold we have, we have items which are almost worthless like food bt armor and sigils cost a lot more.. This is all to do with supply and demand. Obviously, a lot of people make these kind of foods whether it was to level up or other reasons, obviusly there was an excessive supply over demand here, that is why the price is low. Inflation will do nothing to help this, it may artificially increase the price of these items but the sigils and weapons will increase at the same rate. (it’s not going to only benefit the food while keeping the sigils the same, just doesn’t work that way).

Now on to the farming mechanism, some of the most basic ways to earn pure gold is just farming AC 3 paths in about 30-40 mins. You net about close to 3g in just gold and if you sell the items and account for rares and stuff then the total gold would vary between 2.7-5g in those minutes. Now, to me that’s an appropriate amount to earn for 30-40 minutes of work. If you do fractals you could earn less or more of it, it’s really dependent on your loot. If you mix a bit of cof in this, then you’ll probably earn about between 1-3g, gold wise you’ll probably get amount close to 1g at least from two paths and then you can acount for the loot.

n terms of farming mobs now, if I do an hours farm in orr lets say, i typically earn between 1g for loot alone (i.e the grey stuff, not rares), and t6 mats, bags, t5 mats, rares I usually get at least 2-3gs worth)

So it all depending how you see it, it an average of 4g an hr a decent amount? I mean I personally only spend about 1 hr of my time doing only 1 of any of these things. So my average earning a day is about 4-5g + a bit of tp play, that ups it to around 7g a day. So that’s not bad in my books to get that per day. That means in a week if I play consistently i’ll earn about 50g? that’s a pretty good earning for me. With that amount of gold I can buy anything I want in terms of gearing up a character etc. Even if I wanted to farm for esthetics, it would only take me a month of casual play to buy a vision of the mist or any thing higher. In reality, I actually a bit more on that since you have on and off days (but i’ve really concentrated on saying i’m getting OFF days)

So is gold really an issue in this economy? the value of an item is defined by everyones demand and the price is only so high and people are only willing to pay so much for it. Bottom line, some people are just greedy and want instant win tactics, comparing to wow economy is a silly idea because both games have completely different inflation rates. In wow, 1000g is like nothing but most of the sort after gear are obtained through raids anyways. (i’m not as familiar with wow now, haven’t touched it for a good 3-4 years)

Lane.3410:

Unfortunately, prices keep skyrocketing, but my income has not increased hardly at all (much like real life) since I first began playing in September.

Almost nothing has “skyrocketed”, just check the value of basic supplies like copper or iron ore. Not even the price of, for example, Ectoplasms changed that badly. When the game was launched, nobody had any gold. All wealth was artificially introduced by generating gold from NPCs. Now the distribution of wealth starts to settle, completely normal process. Back then, people also didn’t have enough gold to put precursors on the TP for high prices because of the fee (which is one of the necessary gold sinks), not to mention buy them for such prices. Also there’s an increasing demand for precursors because more people complete the prerequisites for legendary weapons now, while the supply hardly increases. As long as people are willing and able to pay these prices, such abolutely luxury items will become more expensive. The price also reflects the required effort for many people, buying and wasting items on the mystical forge.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

The problem is every day those possibilities lower. The trouble is to even make a T-3 item is you need to be a dungeon runner. If you don’t like it. You can’t get the materials to make those items.

No, they don’t. These markets are cyclical. One day you can make a profit, the next day the demand shifts, but eventually it comes back around.

If you could make the items from dungeons do you think many people would run dungeons? The point of those items it to reward the player for undertaking a challenge.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

They are competing against other game manufactures including Blizzard. I never thought I would be on the side of WoW or Blizzard, but their economy being split up does work.

If you think the prices for precursors are high now, think of what would happen if each server had it’s own separate economy.

My memory from WoW is a little fuzy but I don’t remember the auction house being the land of milk and honey. The small economy sizes allowed for some pretty ridiculous price gouging. And if you were looking for an item that was truly rare, your chances of finding in the AH for a reasonable price were greatly diminished. This probably worked very well for a producer of goods, which is another reason I doubt the sincerity of claiming GW2 marketplace to be “bad”. Everyone’s argument boils down to “I want it to be easier to make money”.

The problem with this logic is that it assumes money will only be easier for YOU to make. The reality is whatever way you make money easier to come by, you would make money easier to come by for every single player in the game. Supply/Demand curves would be totally unaffected, you’d see a huge inflation bubble and within matter of weeks the prices of goods on the marketplace would be the same proportion of your income as they currently are.

If it was easier to make money from crafting, more people would do it. Supply would skyrocket, demand would plummet. Your profits would quickly dry up. I’ll state it again, this probably already happened to crafted items at some point in the market’s history.

And what exactly are you proposing to do that would make crafting more profitable that would maintain a good supply/demand curve long term? In other words; what could they possibly do to make crafting more profitable that would stay profitable?

2.7-5 gold for 30-40 minutes of one run on AC?? I’ve never had that type of return.

And I run FOTM all the time. Average run takes about an hour to complete 3-4 fractals and I usually average maybe about 1 gold.

Farming Orr for about an hour.. same result.. about 1 gold per hour return.

Maybe I’m just on the black list and you are still not being hit by DR. Unless I get a luck drop, I average 1-1.5 gold per hour no matter where I play the game.

4 gold an hour isn’t that unreasonable or bad if a player can make that. 1 gold an hour just barely keeps you afloat in this economy.

Iruwen.3164:

Almost nothing has “skyrocketed”, just check the value of basic supplies like copper or iron ore.

The majority of items below max level have never had much value. It’s one of the main reasons I find making gold in GW2 difficult because there’s little profit to be made from gathering materials.

Not even the price of, for example, Ectoplasms changed that badly.

Eh, 25s to 40s is still a significant jump, especially when it’s just been within the past month or so.

Pile of Incandescent Dust has risen almost 400%, Pile of Crystalline Dust has risen about 300%, Unidentified Dyes have risen at least 200% (I remember when 3s/ea. was a high for those), etc.

I guess it depends on what you’re looking at. Most of the items I’ve dealt in or have wanted to purchase have gone up 200%+ within the past 30-45 days and in many cases those prices are still rising.

2 cents (corrected for inflation

Preface, I’m a casual player, no interest in flipping or playing the TP. I bought the game to play the game, not to experiment with econ. That’s simply not my bag. Would I like to see vendor prices higher? Yes. Why? Because it would make Vendor products more affordable. Not Trading Post products, vendor products. I’m thinking of things like Tier 3 cultural weapons and armor. Things who’s utility is very very limited but who’s price far outstrips what they would sell for if placed on the open market.

These items prices are fixed by Anet and don’t represent their value, in my humble opinion. For a casual player like myself, grinding out 100g for a set of Tier 3 is an arduous chore. Playing 2-10 hours a week, which is what I as a working adult and father with many interests am willing to devote to GW2, puts these items on a 6 month to a year scale for acquisition. That sort of glacial progression is not of interest to me personally. I could see myself doing it for a single character, maybe two, but definitely not all. An increase of vendor sell prices would make the high vendor prices of these items less galling and make me feel that my play time was rewarded.

When it comes to the Trading Post, the first law of economics applies. Price will be what the market will bare. If crafting is unprofitable, people will not do it. If precursors can sell for 500g or 1000g, then they will. That is not bad econ, its simply an economic reality that players need to adjust their thinking to. Just because you could make a gold ducat in game X crafting doesn’t mean that you have to be able to do so here in GW2. That’s simply not how the GW2 economy functions. It’s a fact that if you’re a rational human being you will learn through observation and extrapolation. The community sets the value for these items through its collective purchasing power. You have to assess what is important to you and adjust your play appropriately.

For myself, I have no ambition to obtain these high cost items. I’m primarily interested in obtaining a certain look with a certain allotment of time invested. If I see that an object, like a legendary requires an investment of time beyond what I’m willing give, then I accept that object is beyond my means. That is not a bad economy, that is a realistic assessment of my power in an active economy. Returning to my original point, I do not say the prices for even Tier 3 are in any way “wrong.” They are wrong for me. There’s plenty of folks willing and able to invest more time and acquire them. My perspectives on the validity of their pricing is just that, my own self interested perspective. The only way I could see Anet making the adjustments I would want would be if they were concerned about causal players like myself losing interest. Then they would have an incentive, but it would not be because the economics of the situation were broken.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

2.7-5 gold for 30-40 minutes of one run on AC?? I’ve never had that type of return.

And I run FOTM all the time. Average run takes about an hour to complete 3-4 fractals and I usually average maybe about 1 gold.

Farming Orr for about an hour.. same result.. about 1 gold per hour return.

Maybe I’m just on the black list and you are still not being hit by DR. Unless I get a luck drop, I average 1-1.5 gold per hour no matter where I play the game.

4 gold an hour isn’t that unreasonable or bad if a player can make that. 1 gold an hour just barely keeps you afloat in this economy.

im running fractals all the time to(because i think its fun) tho im getting a income of ectos worth atleast 1-1,5g each run and then comes all the greens,blues, white to sell also and i have not been farming much in orr and when i did it where not events tho the times i did i could run around 30-50min and get a return of 4g+ just in mats(tho there are some thing that needs to fit for that being possible) and i never got the gold because the mats are something i need later for a legendary if i at some point whats to make one and to that comes all the other loot you get

i cant say how much i get for running AC or any other dungeon tho ill estemat it to be around 1g

Suppose, hypothetically, the Consortium would open up an auction house. Only bids, no buy-out, every item auctioned there becomes bound to the account. Of course the BLTP still exists as well in it’s current state.
What does everyone think would happen?

Rouven.7409:

Suppose, hypothetically, the Consortium would open up an auction house. Only bids, no buy-out, every item auctioned there becomes bound to the account. Of course the BLTP still exists as well in it’s current state.
What does everyone think would happen?

Well let’s say you’re killing Claw of Jormag and he drops a precursor, but not the one you want. You want to sell it, right? Where would you choose to put it up for sale? This consortium AH, where you have no control over how much it would sell for (I’m assuming the point of this is to take control out of the sellers hands (because they’re evil tycoons), and thus the seller would not be able to set a starting bid)?

Or would you put it up on the TP where you control how much money you will make?

Such an AH might be great for low – mid ticket items, but the things people complain about (lodestones and precursors) would remain on the TP – where the seller has the control.

And if the seller has the ability to set the starting bid, they will surely use the TP has a yardstick to decide what price the starting bid would be, which would largely defeat the purpose.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

You’re argument does not make economic sense.

You want the company to make the npc vendors pay more for your items. This in turn would lead to a larger money supply. Most people use their coins to purchase something, or invest it into the TP to reap profits.

So increasing how much money you get out of npc vendors really does not help you. It would increase demand for items, therefore your wealth could either be the same or it would shrink.

I am by no means rich in GW2, but I don’t find the economy punishing me for it. If I wanted a legendary I would farm for it. My estimation is it would take me about 2 months to get that go or less. In the real world, I want things. It takes time.

I know GW2 stated that the game isn’t meant to be a grindfest. And it really isn’t except for certain items. And some times I feel like I have no real need to accrue coins. All but one of my 80 characters has a full set of exotics. The stat differences for ascended gear isn’t great enough to make me feel uncompetitive to players who have it.

I literally farmed all I needed in coins/mats for my full exotics on one character in a matter of a day. It’s a small price to pay…

The question I would ask you is, Why do you feel poor?

Sadly, what most people complaining about the economy in this game want is a few zeros added to their currency. If Anet were to rename “copper” as “silver” and rename “silver” to “gold” getting rid of what’s currently called gold, the vast majority of market complainers would likely quiet down. People just like big numbers. They see that they’ve never been over 100g in this game and say “I should have 10,000g by now because in other games that’s how much ‘money’ I had by now!” They often feel poor because of how low the currency numbers are in this game as compared to certain others. Sure, 80 exotics would go from about 4g to about 400g, purchasing power parity between games would be unchanged, players would have the same wealth distribution, the game would have the same theoretical GDP, but with a big number in their bank account, people would be less inclined to whine and moan about it.

HP and Damage are other areas with this same behavior, so it’s not just economics. My Necro has over 20k hp in this game, while my GW1 characters could never possibly top 635. Why? Because when players use an attack and do 65 damage, they complain about how weak their character is. A 65 damage attack in GW1 is the same as a 2600 damage attack in GW2, but no one complains about only doing 2600 damage. Because of how ridiculously damage inflated in WoW, Blizzard actually ran into this issue again when trying to keep numbers reasonable to display. They actually wrote a rather thorough and interesting blog post about it.

Kam.8109:

Well let’s say you’re killing Claw of Jormag and he drops a precursor, but not the one you want. You want to sell it, right? Where would you choose to put it up for sale? This consortium AH, where you have no control over how much it would sell for (I’m assuming the point of this is to take control out of the sellers hands (because they’re evil tycoons), and thus the seller would not be able to set a starting bid)?

Or would you put it up on the TP where you control how much money you will make?

Such an AH might be great for low – mid ticket items, but the things people complain about (lodestones and precursors) would remain on the TP – where the seller has the control.

I would have imagined the seller being able to set a starting bid. 5% charge upon placing and 10% charge of the winning bid.

Wow.. this post is doing some weird stuff. I only have each paragraph in once, yet it is repeating sections. And is occurring in both Firefox and Google. Plus, I have paragraph breaks in, but the forums are ignoring them. (Interesting, they say format is blown because I use double periods. Testing)

Ummmm. I dont get you OP. (Original Poster, in case anyone reads this far.)

The TP (Trading Post) properly called Black Lion Trading Post in this game is more awesome and the market as good, if not better than I have seen in Everquest, Lord of the Rings, or SWTOR. (Never played WoW, it always seemed too cliche.) Heck, they even covered the care-bear side of the economy by warning rubes when they tried to sell stuff for below what they could vendor it for. (I used to make a weeks earnings in an hour on EQ buying stuff on the Auction Hall (AH) and running it to a vendor a few feet away.)

I am also a prolific crafter and trader. Heck, in lotro, I have three tunes to cover 6/8 crafting professions and had to create a fifth and sixth tune just for a person to sell in their AH because they are limited to 30 items to post per tune.

Then I read your name, and took that into consideration. Julius Caesar was driven to conquer countries to subjugate them to his will. Gauis Caeser was also known as Caligula a “Roman Emperor who succeeded Tiberius and whose uncontrolled passions resulted in manifest insanity; noted for his cruelty and tyranny; was assassinated (12-41)”. Now, it all makes sense.

Unless you rule all the money and market, you are not happy. Judging by these comments, in real life, you are not happy.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

I am poor in real life. So why would I want to role play as poor?

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

it is fun as a real poor person to have money even if not real. Yet, it isn’t that fun to feel as broke as in real life.

So, you do not feel as rich as in WoW. It almost sounds like you had 30K gold there and dont feel rich in this game without those kinda numbers. What metric are you using? Say, a piece of ore. If it sells for 3 copper to a merchant in this game and 30 gold in the other game, would that not mean that your 30 silver here is worth 30K gold in the other game? (Pure fictitious comparison, as I dont know what currency is used in WoW, much less the copper to gold ratio.)

Your real issues with the game came to the front with these comments:

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

The thing with WoW is the graphics. My guild and friends largely came out of Aion, WoW, and GW1. If a game comes out that has good graphics and is fun for all kinds. That game will win. GW2 makes me sad.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

WoW had a good economy depending on the server of course.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

I know my entire guild along with friends and my wife have all stopped playing the game simply do to the economy. It plays into the fun. We like to craft, but not craft to lose money.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

I still play here and there, but my wife refuses to play.

GaiusJuliusCasear.7253:

Heck, I have offered her 3g to play.

I am sorry. You miss WoW. You feel the graphics are subpar in this game. (They are awesome as far as I am concerned btw.) Your friends are not playing with you any more. And your wife refuses to play this game with you. I actually play Lotro a couple days a week so I can see the friends I have been playing with for year, as they refuse to move on from that game after investing in EQ and leaving it.

But, do not fault a good economy for you own feelings of failure.

Yikes ^^ That’s a repetitive post

Dont bother arguing in this forum, the economists sit here and vehemently defend their little wet dream of a TP. The average player can see the prices of many end game materials has been going up while the average earning income for players hasn’t gone up as much. But people aren’t going to care if they’re the ones making the money, I know several people in game who’ve made a descent ammount of gold, not one of them has done so without flipping items on the TP.

[quote=1427510;John Smith.4610:]

John Smith.4610:

You’re saying you prefer market failures because it adds a sense of opportunity?

“I have to make the argument that your deals are coming at the expense of another player. You are arguing against market efficiency because you want to exploit other people easier, I don’t agree that’s a positive goal for the game overall (though I make no judgement about personal goals).”

Edited for brevity. @ John Smith: I agree with you in this case. Realistic economy is more “fair” and user friendly to the population. What this individual is referring to is “exploiting”, for lack of better words. I don’t even think its exploiting. Buy low sell high? FA’s do this all day. And I agree with him, that having the ability to play the market in a certain way is what draws people in as well. There are two camps, those that prefer a realistic economy, and those that prefer to play the market.

I guess what I am getting at is: Do you think the current economy is where it should be? Because a lot of folks around here do not think so. Especially when it relates to precursors. Now, I know you are not in charge of game design, so I’ll leave out my griping concerning the acquisition of a legendary. But being cornered to save up 400+ gold for a precursor, on top of all of the other expenses that you MUST use gold for(ahem 100 rune stones, 100 gold), it gets pricey. Why must a legendary = obsurd amount of gold? That is not legendary. So I do not think that, in regards to legendaries, the economy is in a good place for that reason. And it is for that reason alone that I am not actively trying to go after my legendary. And it is for that reason alone that I have slowed my GW2 playing.

We can see that the economy issues compound down(or up) through the game, reverberating.

I agree with you, and I agree with the individual that prefers an uneven market.
Hard to pick a side

Folk.2093:

Dont bother arguing in this forum, the economists sit here and vehemently defend their little wet dream of a TP. The average player can see the prices of many end game materials has been going up while the average earning income for players hasn’t gone up as much. But people aren’t going to care if they’re the ones making the money, I know several people in game who’ve made a descent ammount of gold, not one of them has done so without flipping items on the TP.

The issue is the economists on the forum understand what a “good economy” is as opposed to a “bad economy.” They’re not held down by inaccurate presumptions. It is highly amusing to see how many people repeat that same “income isn’t going up, but costs are” argument. In this economy, that’s actually impossible because a player’s income is directly related to the costs in the game. If the price of T6 mats goes up, all players who acquire T6 mats (that is to say, every single player who plays in a level 80 area) have their income rise.

So many people have tried to make that argument over and over again, yet I’ve never seen a single one attempt to quantify it. They always say the same thing “well it’s obvious, everybody knows it’s happening” but never once has a single one of those people attempted to provide even the smallest bit of evidence to support their argument. Instead they inevitably devolve directly to ad hominem attacks against anyone who doesn’t immediately take their word for it.

Folk.2093:

Dont bother arguing in this forum, the economists sit here and vehemently defend their little wet dream of a TP. The average player can see the prices of many end game materials has been going up while the average earning income for players hasn’t gone up as much. But people aren’t going to care if they’re the ones making the money, I know several people in game who’ve made a descent ammount of gold, not one of them has done so without flipping items on the TP.

Hogwash. I’ve made up to 30g in 5hrs farming.

Flipping is slower than farming until you have higher purchasing power.

Making money with crafting is a WoW thing. You know the main reason you make money with crafting in that game? Scarcity. Because each server has a separate economy. They make money because since there’s a smaller pool of players who can make the item, they can charge more. Scarcity allows them to profit.

I find it ironic that there are people in this thread saying it’s a bad economy because there isn’t enough scarcity, while a few posts up there are people claiming the economy is bad because there’s too much scarcity. I guess we only want scarcity when it benefits us?

I don’t think that holds up. Are there less crafters per server in WoW? Sure. But there are equally less customers. It should balance out. I think the problem with most crafting in GW as a profitable business venture is that most sub-80 gear is so replaceable. I mean, you tend to outlevel stuff so quickly that while you need to produce about 2-3 full sets of gear at every five levels in order to advance your crafting, most players only need to buy a new full set of gear every 10-15 levels as they go, less if they get lucky drops. I frequently hit 80 using characters that are running around with a few pieces of level 65 gear. And even if all you want is “the look,” crafted style tiers tend to last for 15+ levels, so unless you’re going for the level 80 stuff, you can just get one copy of the cheapest stuff and Transmute it up.

Since you aren’t compelled to buy new gear every five levels, and yet so much gear is on the market, the supply far outstrips demand, and would do so even if instead of 50K crafters serving 500K customers you had only 500 crafters serving 5K customers.

The way for them to add value to the crafting markets would be to add items that 1. Are highly useful and desirable, like gear that offers Rare-quality stats at Master-quality costs, or consumables that are awesome, and 2. make them offer ZERO crafting XP. It’s the crafting XP that throws the entire system, because it has people churning out stacks of things that they don’t personally need, which they then dump on the market. For an item to have any significant profit potential, it needs to offer no XP, so that people only make as many as they think they can sell, not stacks and stacks that they’re willing to sell at a loss.

I also think that they’d have to make crafting involve skill. There should be some account-bound items, not RNG-based but effort based, that are needed to craft “valuable” items. I’m not sure what the skill would need to be, but the basic idea would be that it wouldn’t be effortless to be a “professional” crafter. You could, as a mostly combat character, make decent gear to keep yourself equipped, but you could not craft the stuff that would tend to turn a profit. To make those, you would need to do something special, like maybe running certain non-combat events (like where you feed party goers or whatever) that would give a special resource. Since only people that go out of their way to accumulate this resource would have it, only they could produce “valuable” level gear.

I find it ironic that there are people in this thread saying it’s a bad economy because there isn’t enough scarcity, while a few posts up there are people claiming the economy is bad because there’s too much scarcity. I guess we only want scarcity when it benefits us?

Both are true, just in different areas. Plenty of items are way too common. Anything that sells at or near vendor costs, or anything crafted that costs more to make than the going sale price, is way too common in the economy. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that are way too rare, like certain high end runes and sigils, precursors, etc. Anything that sells for, say, ten times the vendor price is probably not common enough. Anything that sells for over 50 times the vendor price is just ridiculous. People that luck out on RNG and get one of these things can make a fortune, people that don’t luck out and need to buy one stand to lose a fortune. It shouldn’t be that random, it should balance out to more of a balanced exchange.

plasmacutter.2709:

…
I graduated from a top 10 econ program, understood the subject better in my sleep than most of the people nosing the grindstone, and I say this game has a bad economy.

….

here are some examples from a real economy:

So much wrong here…

when aluminum becomes too expensive, auto manufacturers can swap to steel.
Try swapping a crystalline lodestone for a charged one and see how far that gets you.

Horrid example of a substitute, and a profound ignorance of manufacturing.. not even mentioning resourcing, contractual, operational, or even the regulatory costs of “just switching”. With resepct to GW2, one of the main price factors of legendaries (and hence all the subsequent components required to acheive one) is intangible – all exotics of the same stat and item type are legitamate substitues with resepct to performance, only in that the skins are the intangible which commands the degree of price variance between them. And even then, being able to transmute them makes skins an even more universal commodity.

When the price of oil skyrockets, everyone goes out drilling for more. The price of precursors is rocketing out of control, but the horrific drop rate makes volunteering to add to that supply a ludicrous option.

Again, the start up cost is a significant barrier of entry for “everyone” going out and drilling for more" which inhernetly allows for the preclusion of the majority. Fruther the incremental cost of adding a new drill site for an established oil company is vastly different between even established participants much less then the start up cost for a new drilling company.

Likewise, if you have already have a precursor, and are willing to sell it, acquiring the next precursor and repeating the process is much less then someone who doesn’t have one to start with. The barrier of entry to getting that first precursor is the same for everyone.

When you plant crops, you will, barring a horrific natural disaster or outright negligence, be able to reap what you sow. If you go to farm in GW2 you get a backpack full of porous bones.

Wow… And therefore there’s absolutely no need for a commodities market…. by the same logic, eveyone should be a farmer because reaping what you sow would always be profitable, regardless of any methods of production, costs, prices, etc.

This, is a bad economy. So bad it, along with ANet’s insistence on swinging and missing wildly with the nerf club before even making the trait lines of half the professions in the game have the novel concept of “synergy”, discourages me from logging on.

Perhaps the time may be better spent on another degree?

I guess the vast ammount of people and number of threads popping up complaining about the economy in this game doesnt mean a thing.

Folk.2093:

I guess the vast ammount of people and number of threads popping up complaining about the economy in this game doesnt mean a thing.

What, and the vast amounts of posters here who explain very well why the economy isn’t “destroyed” doesn’t mean thing also?

Ursan.7846:

Folk.2093:

I guess the vast ammount of people and number of threads popping up complaining about the economy in this game doesnt mean a thing.

What, and the vast amounts of posters here who explain very well why the economy isn’t “destroyed” doesn’t mean thing also?

Is more than one poster posting with your account sir?

Ohoni.6057:

I also think that they’d have to make crafting involve skill. There should be some account-bound items, not RNG-based but effort based, that are needed to craft “valuable” items. I’m not sure what the skill would need to be, but the basic idea would be that it wouldn’t be effortless to be a “professional” crafter. You could, as a mostly combat character, make decent gear to keep yourself equipped, but you could not craft the stuff that would tend to turn a profit. To make those, you would need to do something special, like maybe running certain non-combat events (like where you feed party goers or whatever) that would give a special resource. Since only people that go out of their way to accumulate this resource would have it, only they could produce “valuable” level gear.

Well, they could achieve the same mechanism by introducing significant crafting cooldowns. If you can’t only make any given exotic once every 30 hours, that would eliminate the oversupply. There are plenty of places where crafters can make money as it is, but it’s not the big profits in obvious spots that some other games have had.

Ultimately, while a lot of the poor market for crafting comes from oversupply, I’d argue more of it comes from low demand (as you touched on). The GW model of more or less homogenized gear that’s differentiated by appearance instead of function limits the market. For example, my thief hasn’t gotten new gear since a couple days after hitting 80 (except for ascended rings, but those are a different monster). I like the way my current gear looks, and there’s no other gear out there with the possibility for better stats. As a player, I like the system as it is. But for crafters, it means very limited markets. There’s really no reason for most players to purchase crafted items, so there’s little to no profit in making them.

Folk.2093:

I guess the vast ammount of people and number of threads popping up complaining about the economy in this game doesnt mean a thing.

This is known as argumentum ad populum. You are correct when you state that it doesn’t mean a thing.

Syeria.4812:

Folk.2093:

I guess the vast ammount of people and number of threads popping up complaining about the economy in this game doesnt mean a thing.

This is known as argumentum ad populum. You are correct when you state that it doesn’t mean a thing.

Just pointing out that’s what laws are based on. Kinda funny that logical fallacies are used to argue laws which are logical fallacies in of themselves.

Essence Snow.3194:

Just pointing out that’s what laws are based on. Kinda funny that logical fallacies are used to argue laws which are logical fallacies in of themselves.

Laws (assuming a democracy) aren’t intended to be logically derived as correct. They are intended to be an expression of popular mandate. Some countries (including the U.S.), however, recognize that popular mandate isn’t strong enough to determine the best decision and have checks/balances to the popular mandate… Anyway, enough about government, this is about economy… Actually, it seems this is about precursors, once more, not economy, since economy takes into account everything.

Essence Snow.3194:

Yikes ^^ That’s a repetitive post

Sigh.. yeah.. Looks nothing like how I typed it in. It almost looks like the forum autocache wont clean out what it autosaved each round. i even exported it to Notepad, deleted the post and then started a new one with the same result. I submitted a bug report and was sent to the forum bug section, where it will probably rot.

JaironKalach.4938:

(…) Anyway, enough about government, this is about economy… Actually, it seems this is about precursors, once more, not economy, since economy takes into account everything.

What is everything? I ask because often I don’t really believe it is the technical economic aspect that people think of – while they tend to get exactly only those answers until finally buried in a back and forth of definitions and “facts”.

plasmacutter.2709:

silvermember.8941:

The people that say silly stuff like these usually say it for 2 reasons.
1. They lack understanding real economies.

I graduated from a top 10 econ program, understood the subject better in my sleep than most of the people nosing the grindstone, and I say this game has a bad economy.

2. They are so used to all the crappy game economies that when they see one that is more similar to a real one (not to the extent of EvE). That they complain.

Similar to a real one? Must.. restrain.. laughter.

here are some examples from a real economy:

when aluminum becomes too expensive, auto manufacturers can swap to steel.
Try swapping a crystalline lodestone for a charged one and see how far that gets you.

When the price of oil skyrockets, everyone goes out drilling for more. The price of precursors is rocketing out of control, but the horrific drop rate makes volunteering to add to that supply a ludicrous option.

When you plant crops, you will, barring a horrific natural disaster or outright negligence, be able to reap what you sow. If you go to farm in GW2 you get a backpack full of porous bones.

They say this is to discourage botting, but bots don’t get tired or bored, humans do.

This, is a bad economy. So bad it, along with ANet’s insistence on swinging and missing wildly with the nerf club before even making the trait lines of half the professions in the game have the novel concept of “synergy”, discourages me from logging on.

If it makes you feel any better, I also graduate from a 10 top econ program, so I think i know a thing or 2 about economics. On the interweb, we all graduate from a top 10 econ program.

I want to add that, for someone that prides himself of graduating from a top 10 program, I have to say I am a little disappointed in your lack of reading comprehension. I did not say, it was exactly like a real economy I said it was closer, how close? I intentionally left it vague.

It doesn’t take someone from a 10 top econ program to figure out that any game where you can generate an infinite amount of something in such a such time will never replicate a real economy. I want to add that with your porus bone example, even in real life input=/=output. You can put in 10 hours worth of work and still get nothing from it, in this case grind for 10 hours and leave with porus bones.

Ohoni.6057:

Are there less crafters per server in WoW? Sure. But there are equally less customers. It should balance out.

You have 2 professions in that game. Most people don’t go with 2 production professions, as that would mean they have to buy 100% of their supplies in the AH (why would that concern them? hmm…). There is less production going on, not because there are less people producing, but because they only make products from 1 profession (as opposed to GW2 where everyone has 2). There is usually another profession a player can benefit from, but taking 2 in that game means sacrificing a gather skill. So instead the opt to be a customer of another player who posesses the crafting skill they don’t. So you see, there are not less customers per server in that game, there are actually more.

Does everybody see why comparing that game to this one in fallacious? Due to differences in craft and (most importantly) the size of the in game market, supply/demand curves are very different. This is pretty much comparing apples and oranges so please stop.

If you want to argue that you should only have 1 crafting profession to cut down on supply that’s fine. But don’t expect huge profits because remember; market places are linked and everyone’s a producer. I think end the end crafting would be right where it is now, unprofitable.

People keep thinking in terms of “lets make this more profitable”, without realizing what would happen IMMEDIATELY after. If it starts making money, everyone will start doing it which would create the same cycle: supply goes up, demand goes down, profits go down.

Ohoni.6057:

The way for them to add value to the crafting markets would be to add items that 1. Are highly useful and desirable, like gear that offers Rare-quality stats at Master-quality costs, or consumables that are awesome, and 2. make them offer ZERO crafting XP. It’s the crafting XP that throws the entire system, because it has people churning out stacks of things that they don’t personally need, which they then dump on the market. For an item to have any significant profit potential, it needs to offer no XP, so that people only make as many as they think they can sell, not stacks and stacks that they’re willing to sell at a loss.

If items are highly useful and desirable, they will initially turn a profit, yes. But as soon as it catches on that it’s turning a profit, people will immediately start doing it. And you will have the same cycle: supply goes up, demand goes down, profits go down.

I did not level huntsman, jeweler, and leatherworker to 400 because of the xp gain. I did this because I wanted to produce the exact gear I wanted at higher levels, without having to rely on what I thought at the time would be a price gouging TP (you can tell which game I had just came from playing). Even though the prices on the TP turned out to be on par with the material cost, it’s still better to possess the profession, as you’re not relying on other people to make the gear you want.

Your final point again refers to the notion that profitable crafting will remain profitable. So once again…. If you make crafting more profitable, everyone will start doing itand you will have the same cycle: supply goes up, demand goes down, profits go down.

Ohoni.6057:

Anything that sells for over 50 times the vendor price is just ridiculous. People that luck out on RNG and get one of these things can make a fortune, people that don’t luck out and need to buy one stand to lose a fortune. It shouldn’t be that random, it should balance out to more of a balanced exchange.

And now we get to the real reason people complain about the economy. They’re not complaining about the economy, or how much profits can come from crafting, no. What they’re really complaining about is their lack of legendaries. If the rare items suddenly became easy to come by everyone would have one. Stop and think about that for a moment. The item that you’ve been hoping for and pining for (that in both the cases of legendaries and lodestone crafted items offer no stat advantages) would suddenly be everywhere. Why would anyone still want them at that point? What kind of market would you have without scarcity?

@Kam just wanted to point out that it is possible to have a crafting recipe which will forever and ever profitable, if the inputs/outputs all went to a vendor.

Of course this will create rampant inflation, and Anet will obviously never do this. But that is a whole different discussion.

OP, the sense of opportunity in the economy that you’re talking about is the ability to make a profit from other players. To profit from crafting, you have to sell to people who are too lazy to make it themselves or too ignorant to know that crafting what they want would be cheaper. To profit from flipping on items on the TP, you have to sell to people who are too impatient to wait, even though it would save them money. GW2 gives such a high visibility to the market that its hard to con people out of their money, and I can’t say that’s a bad thing.

I think the economy works quite well now. If you play like I do (2 hours a day, on Saturday and Sunday may be 4 hours) it is easy to get enough money to gear up all your characters with exotic gear. I had even enough money to craft a Vision of the Mist GS – though legendary is far out of my reach.

I don’t do TP (I mean: I sell dropped gear there if it is profitable but I don’t flip things or evaluate trends). I find that boring.

I level alts, do sometimes wvw, sometimes farming in Orr and usually 2 runs of Citadel of Flame path 1 (one with my warrior, one with my guardian). On weekends I do additional dungeon runs. I am now back at about 100 gold after I have exhausted my finances crafting that Vision of the Mist. That is not outstanding but more than enough to fit out my next alt, a mesmer.

So I cannot complain about the economy. I imagine that one who is more interested in the market mechanics may make much more money than me, but there is nothing interesting to buy for.

OP says he feels poor in the game. I feel rich. And that with a minimum of effort.

To be honest though: crafting is usually a loss. If you don’t want it to be a loss you must invest time and effort to analzye prizes and trends in the TP. Boring. In the same time I could experiment with a new character in a Honor-Of-The-Wave run or whatever strikes my fancy…

I’d also like to note that there are some crafted items that currently have 0 listed for sale on the TP. If you craft those, you can sell them at essentially whatever price you want and make a sizable profit. I recently sold a few crafted items for 200-300% profit because no one else was crafting them.