Before posting about inflation, read this
Right, but other than TP flipping, I do find it increasing more difficult to farm for the things I want.
Many of the more desired item do gradually become more and more time consuming to farm for it.
There is a sharp increase in the gem and legendary price, but our gold farming ability really didn’t increase that much.
Gems are an entirely different market working under an entirely different mechanism to determine price. We could have zero inflation on the TP and Gems would still be going up.
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RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
if there was inflation in gw2, every item would cost more. currently, that is not the case. I would say the average price for items is about the same as it was for the last 1.5 years (the first few months don’t really count for this as the market was just starting)
GW2Profits - a collection of gold-producing tools
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Mystic’s Gold Profiting Guide
Forge & more JSON recipes
The problem is that players are (mostly) not economists, so when players talk about “inflation,” they aren’t necessarily using the proper economic definition of the term, but are instead using the vernacular definition of the term, which basically boils down to “the things that I want to spend my money on seem to be getting more and more expensive over time.”
The real problem is that the armchair economists following the game, and worryingly John Smith seems to fall into this category as well, then dismiss these people because they are clearly using the term incorrectly, when in fact they should be paying more attention to the intent behind the layer’s using that term.
John Smith can talk all he wants that GW2 does not have too much inflation, and for all I know that is 100% true from an academic economic perspective, but in practical terms, there is very clearly vernacular inflation going on, and there should be more effort put forth in combating it.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
if there was inflation in gw2, every item would cost more. currently, that is not the case. I would say the average price for items is about the same as it was for the last 1.5 years (the first few months don’t really count for this as the market was just starting)
I’m not sure how you reach that conclusion.
Almost all the crafting material went up a bunch. And the crafting material should consist of a huge portion of the CPI.
if there was inflation in gw2, every item would cost more. currently, that is not the case. I would say the average price for items is about the same as it was for the last 1.5 years (the first few months don’t really count for this as the market was just starting)
I’m not sure how you reach that conclusion.
Almost all the crafting material went up a bunch. And the crafting material should consist of a huge portion of the CPI.
I also wouldnt use prices from the first 6 months for comparison or calculating long term inflation. It was all topsy turfy. For example, the majority of the player base went through the same level regions at the start ofthe game, so first t1 mats went to vendor value, then t2 mats, then t3 and so on.
Also, during the first couple of months, the game economy had quite some flaws (botting, exploits, etc.) that had a huge impact. Over time, Anet learned from its mistakes and got a better grip on these issues, which lead to a more stable economy.
About half a year ago, User Samuirai made some great graphs to illustrate inflation, with different goods baskets but unfortunately that site is down.
A good basket in my opinion would be each section of the collectible tab. So you basically calculate what it costs to buy 1 each of:
Common Mats, Fine Mats, Rare Mats, Cooking ingredients and gem stones, every week since release.
Edit: Here the old topic from Samuirai, as mentioned website and video are taken down.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Gold-Inflation-Research/first#post3645705
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
(edited by Wanze.8410)
But prices going up may have nothing to do with “classic inflation” and I mean in terms of excess currency. More players at a specific level increases demand. Value of salvage of that item. Popularity even. Their was a time when Sentinel armor was the thing and the price of an exotic level 80 heavy chest piece was over 100g. It’s now under 12g. A similar Berserker piece crashed last December from 7g to under 3g. Sure in that case it’s recovered to the 6-7g range and if you started last Christmas is certainly looks like inflation to you but that’s a single item market that got shocked and recovered.
If an individual item’s price is increasing steadily it’s usually caused by a swing in popularity, ie Berserker. On the forum everyone crows about how Berserker is the way to go. Accepting the popular view then Berserker demand will drive up it’s price compared to say Settler’s where the price has been essentially flat.
Prices are all supply and demand driven and if there is a shock on supply or a marked increase in real demand then the price will shoot up. Increasing coin rewards simply feeds actual inflation. And increasing supply, assuming the items can’t be crafted but only found, decreases the uniqueness of having such an item which may be the reason so many want one. If it’s no longer unique, demand drops and the price crashes. You can afford it now but one of the reasons for wanting one may be gone.
“When everyone’s super … then no one will be.”
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
I think all of the event and reward changes made it easier for the great bulk of players to make a little more money, but harder for the smaller, but still significant, farming crew to make a ton of money. TP Kings are a tiny fraction of the playerbase, but their effect on the broader economy is probably more limited than most people estimate since they don’t actually generate money – they just reallocate existing wealth.
As for a Tyrian CPI, I think it’s probably best to approach it from the “uneducated casuals” point of view, the group I suspect is the driving economic force in the game. People who buy/sell leveling gear off the TP, common crafting ingredients, maybe some food consumables…
The problem is that players are (mostly) not economists, so when players talk about “inflation,” they aren’t necessarily using the proper economic definition of the term, but are instead using the vernacular definition of the term, which basically boils down to “the things that I want to spend my money on seem to be getting more and more expensive over time.”
The real problem is that the armchair economists following the game, and worryingly John Smith seems to fall into this category as well, then dismiss these people because they are clearly using the term incorrectly, when in fact they should be paying more attention to the intent behind the layer’s using that term.
John Smith can talk all he wants that GW2 does not have too much inflation, and for all I know that is 100% true from an academic economic perspective, but in practical terms, there is very clearly vernacular inflation going on, and there should be more effort put forth in combating it.
Supply and demand. When demand goes up for an item, with supply remaining the same, price will go up. In the type of economy that Anet created for this game, and their intention for legendary weapons to be a long term goal for players to strive towards, you thinking that they must intervene is incorrect.
The problem is that players are (mostly) not economists, ….
The real problem is that the armchair economists following the game, and worryingly John Smith seems to fall into this category as well, …
<<me loves the irony of this post>>
but are instead using the vernacular definition of the term, which basically boils down to “the things that I want to spend my money on seem to be getting more and more expensive over time.”
If they were even using it that way I would understand it. But they don’t even use it like that.
The way they are using the term is ‘the price on this thing I want went up.’
Period.
If they then made a post like:
‘The price of Dusk went up. I have been saving money for it for months, and after the price went up I feel like I have lost a lot of progress and it feels even further out of reach.’
I would be sympathetic to that. Players like that have been left behind by the rise in the price level stemming from the wardrobe change, and have a legitimate complaint. It’s worth discussing.
But you don’t get to have that discussion when you start by attributing it to inflation.
Almost all the crafting material went up a bunch. And the crafting material should consist of a huge portion of the CPI.
T5 crafting material prices and precursor prices are tied together very closely. When one moves, the other does as well, with very little error.
T6 fine materials prices are somewhat loosely tied to T5 material prices as well. It’s not as close a tie as to precursors, but when one moves you can bet the other will as well.
Not to mention that precursor and T6 fine demand are also linked to demand for legendaries, and will move together on those grounds as well.
All three are tied intricately together.
Supply and demand. When demand goes up for an item, with supply remaining the same, price will go up. In the type of economy that Anet created for this game, and their intention for legendary weapons to be a long term goal for players to strive towards, you thinking that they must intervene is incorrect.
“Supply and demand” is an explanation, not a justification. It’d be like going into court to defend yourself in a mugging case and saying “well, he had money that I wanted, to I mugged him.” A perfectly valid explanation, not one likely to get you off though. Yes, supply and demand is the cause of the current, past, and future prices, but since ANet had control over both supply AND (in a sense) demand, the prices that result are still entirely the fault of their actions.
But you don’t get to have that discussion when you start by attributing it to inflation.
Sure you do, because it’s unreasonable to expect the average player to be an economist and to understand what economic language they’ve picked up in the normal world, so it’s important to try and understand what they actually mean, and to address that point, rather than to get all academic about whether they are using the proper term to describe the problem they are having.
If a tech support help line just said “it isn’t that problem” and hanging up every time someone called in complaining about their hardware not working while using the wrong terminology, then not a lot of problems would get fixed that way and there would be a lot of complaints to the company in question.
T5 crafting material prices and precursor prices are tied together very closely. When one moves, the other does as well, with very little error.
T6 fine materials prices are somewhat loosely tied to T5 material prices as well. It’s not as close a tie as to precursors, but when one moves you can bet the other will as well.
Potentially. More accurately though, demand for T5-6 mats are closely tied to Precursors, the price is then determined by supply/demand. If you lower demand while keeping supply the same, then prices will fall, and vice-versa. My point being, if they make a move that lowers demand in an item, and they want the price to remain stable, they just have to cut supply accordingly, or if they raise demand in an item, they just need to increase supply. This is not terribly hard for them to do, and they have done so in the past.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Supply and demand. When demand goes up for an item, with supply remaining the same, price will go up. In the type of economy that Anet created for this game, and their intention for legendary weapons to be a long term goal for players to strive towards, you thinking that they must intervene is incorrect.
“Supply and demand” is an explanation, not a justification. It’d be like going into court to defend yourself in a mugging case and saying “well, he had money that I wanted, to I mugged him.” A perfectly valid explanation, not one likely to get you off though. Yes, supply and demand is the cause of the current, past, and future prices, but since ANet had control over both supply AND (in a sense) demand, the prices that result are still entirely the fault of their actions.
Supply and demand is just as much of a justification as it is an explanation. Perhaps if you understood how the economy was created within this game, and how it functions today, you’d understand that. Instead you’re trying to force something that goes against that. You also fail to realize that ANY supply that enters the market is directly from players and ANY prices set are directly from players.
Remember, we only have half of the picture. We don’t have any real way of knowing the income generation and distribution figures.
Price is a function of what people are (a) willing and (b) able to pay for an item. Just because people are willing and able to push a lot of money into the precursor market does not mean that there are general inflationary trends across the entire economy.
Remember how people were flipping out in 2009-2010 about how QE was going to cause hyper inflation because the fed was just “printing money?” And then inflation never materialized because it just went to Wall Street and got pushed into an asset bubble (the S&P 500 and HY debt)?
Supply and demand is just as much of a justification as it is an explanation. Perhaps if you understood how the economy was created within this game, and how it functions today, you’d understand that. Instead you’re trying to force something that goes against that. You also fail to realize that ANY supply that enters the market is directly from players and ANY prices set are directly from players.
Again, explanation, not justification. It’s true, it just doesn’t mean anything. Prices are set directly by the players, but the people selling set the price they think they can get. The price they can get depends on how much people want the thing, and by how many of that thing exist in the world, it is predictable by all involved.
The demand for the item is how much people want it. If it is a finished good, like a weapon, then people want it for how cool it looks. ANet determines how cool it looks. Or it might be because of how good the effects are. ANet sets those effects. If it is a component, like a crafting mat, then demand is based on how many are needed for recipes, and how useful that recipe is. Ergo, ANet has 100% control over the demand for an item, if they can make an item cool or ugly, strong or weak, they can make recipes use 250 of the item or 25, they can make the resulting items good or bad, it’s all up to them, and they’ve tweaked demand plenty of times in the past as they see fit.
Supply is also in ANet’s hand. Yes, players can choose to farm an item as much or as little as they want, and they sometimes do, but if ANet makes an item convenient to farm it will be farmed more often, and if they make it less convenient then it will be less farmed. If they want more of an item to enter the economy than currently is without changing demand for that item, all they need to do is increase the percentage rate that existing sources drop them, or increase the number of different sources that drop them, just make it more fun or interesting to engage the existing content (for example having more events in a given area). They’ve also tweaked supply numerous times.
So yes, “Supply and Demand,” but ANet controls the levers for both supply AND demand, so really “Supply and Demand” = “What ANet wants to happen and what ANet wants to happen.” So any pricing that the community disagrees with is ANet’s fault, not the players’.
So long story short, if players complain “the item I want is too expensive,” then “supply and demand,” while true, is not actually a justification for that result, it is not an answer to their problem, it’s just a meaningless statement of nothing, like if someone says “it’s raining and I’m wet,” and you answer back with “rain is precipitation.” When people say “it’s raining and I am wet,” they’re looking for an umbrella, or sme other way to prevent getting wet, not some lecture on how rain is formed.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Supply and demand is just as much of a justification as it is an explanation. Perhaps if you understood how the economy was created within this game, and how it functions today, you’d understand that. Instead you’re trying to force something that goes against that. You also fail to realize that ANY supply that enters the market is directly from players and ANY prices set are directly from players.
Again, explanation, not justification. It’s true, it just doesn’t mean anything. Prices are set directly by the players, but the people selling set the price they think they can get. The price they can get depends on how much people want the thing, and by how many of that thing exist in the world, it is predictable by all involved.
The demand for the item is how much people want it. If it is a finished good, like a weapon, then people want it for how cool it looks. ANet determines how cool it looks. Or it might be because of how good the effects are. ANet sets those effects. If it is a component, like a crafting mat, then demand is based on how many are needed for recipes, and how useful that recipe is. Ergo, ANet has 100% control over the demand for an item, if they can make an item cool or ugly, strong or weak, they can make recipes use 250 of the item or 25, they can make the resulting items good or bad, it’s all up to them, and they’ve tweaked demand plenty of times in the past as they see fit.
Supply is also in ANet’s hand. Yes, players can choose to farm an item as much or as little as they want, and they sometimes do, but if ANet makes an item convenient to farm it will be farmed more often, and if they make it less convenient then it will be less farmed. If they want more of an item to enter the economy than currently is without changing demand for that item, all they need to do is increase the percentage rate that existing sources drop them, or increase the number of different sources that drop them, just make it more fun or interesting to engage the existing content (for example having more events in a given area). They’ve also tweaked supply numerous times.
So yes, “Supply and Demand,” but ANet controls the levers for both supply AND demand, so really “Supply and Demand” = “What ANet wants to happen and what ANet wants to happen.” So any pricing that the community disagrees with is ANet’s fault, not the players’.
So long story short, if players complain “the item I want is too expensive,” then “supply and demand,” while true, is not actually a justification for that result, it is not an answer to their problem, it’s just a meaningless statement of nothing, like if someone says “it’s raining and I’m wet,” and you answer back with “rain is precipitation.” When people say “it’s raining and I am wet,” they’re looking for an umbrella, or sme other way to prevent getting wet, not some lecture on how rain is formed.
No but try again.
Sure you do, because it’s unreasonable to expect the average player to be an economist
I don’t expect the average player to be an economist. I expect the average player to know nothing of economics.
I wish it was reasonable for the average player to understand that they are not an economist.
Potentially. More accurately though, demand for T5-6 mats are closely tied to Precursors, the price is then determined by supply/demand.
Nope. What I said was correct.
Lol, you really can’t handle it when people don’t buy into your koolaide arguments, can you?
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Lol, you really can’t handle it when people don’t buy into your koolaide arguments, can you?
What are koolaide arguments?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Lol, you really can’t handle it when people don’t buy into your koolaide arguments, can you?
What are koolaide arguments?
Arguments that he doesn’t agree with.
Lol, you really can’t handle it when people don’t buy into your koolaide arguments, can you?
What are koolaide arguments?
Arguments that he doesn’t agree with.
So people dont buy into his arguments that nobody agrees with?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Lol, you really can’t handle it when people don’t buy into your koolaide arguments, can you?
As you didnt quote a specific user and everybody seems to disagree with you and you disagree with everybody else, i guess this statemente is about yourself?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Lol, you really can’t handle it when people don’t buy into your koolaide arguments, can you?
What are koolaide arguments?
Arguments that he doesn’t agree with.
So people dont buy into his arguments that nobody agrees with?
I don’t know at this point. I’m only semi paying attention now. You have one person who believes TP flipping is bad and not playing the game. You have another trying to apply a double meaning to the word inflation when it comes to prices. You have another arguing that supply and demand is determined by ANET rather than the players. Or maybe it’s just two people arguing those. There’s like three or four threads going on about the same subject.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
As you didnt quote a specific user and everybody seems to disagree with you and you disagree with everybody else, i guess this statemente is about yourself?
I was addressing the two posters before that one, where I’d basically laid out why the players are reacting to the market as they do, and the response was basically “nuh uh!” because they couldn’t think of any actual argument against it. It was kind of sad, but not at all unexpected.
I know that there are a lot of people on this sub-forum that enjoy ridiculing anyone who prefers swinging a sword to swinging a TP UI, but hopefully at some point the game will leave them all behind.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
the response was basically “nuh uh!”
The response is ‘you have no idea what you are talking about, and I’m going to put as much effort into my responses as you’ve put into learning what you’re talking about.’
That is, none.
^^^
Was pretty much why I did my “No but try again” post.
In any structured debate that would cause you to lose traction. Should it be any different here?
Serenity now~Insanity later
In any structured debate that would cause you to lose traction. Should it be any different here?
Except this isn’t a structured debate as both parties would be knowledgeable about the subject matter before attempting to form an argument.
John Smith can talk all he wants that GW2 does not have too much inflation, and for all I know that is 100% true from an academic economic perspective, but in practical terms, there is very clearly vernacular inflation going on, and there should be more effort put forth in combating it.
I just looked up vernacular inflation (english is my 2nd language) and i couldnt get a proper definition. I guess you mean the vernacular use of the word inflation by the majority of the player base but didnt the OP (and JS in several posts in other topics) just do that?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
So if one is lacking in knowledge about a subject they shouldn’t attempt in forming an argument, but if one has knowledge about a subject (well lets be real here…feels they have more knowledge about a subject) then a valid counter may be expressed without any conveyed consideration?
Serenity now~Insanity later
So if one is lacking in knowledge about a subject they shouldn’t attempt in forming an argument, but if one has knowledge about a subject (well lets be real here…feels they have more knowledge about a subject) then a valid counter may be expressed without any conveyed consideration?
Again, that’s in a structured debate where both people have knowledge about the subject matter so the discussions don’t degrade into what we have right now. It’s not worth the effort to do a structured debate as others would not do the same.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
In any structured debate that would cause you to lose traction. Should it be any different here?
If my opponent started rambling incoherently in a structured debate I would be perfectly satisfied with sticking to a simple, 2-3 sentence initial argument, and would happily reply to any amount of gibberish with ‘I stand by my initial argument’.
I do not believe it needs to be any different here.
So if one is lacking in knowledge about a subject they shouldn’t attempt in forming an argument
They by all means should attempt to form an argument, but they should not expect a counter-argument until they actually succeed in forming an argument.
Inflation is a macroeconomic concept that describes changes in the general prices for goods and services in an economy. If there is inflation, the value of 1 unit of currency is decreasing. If there is deflation, the value of 1 unit of currency increases.
Generally speaking, inflation occurs for two broad reasons: (1) excess currency allows consumers to bid up the general price levels (demand driven) and (2) increased production costs drive up general price levels (supply driven).
Inflation is not typically used to describe changes in the price level for individual goods. Instead, that is just a result of changes in the marketing clearing price based on supply and demand.
Complaining about inflation in the abstract is pointless because you also have to consider the changes in consumer income generation. 100 years ago, it may have only cost $100 per month to rent an apartment, but people earned significantly less then too. Instead, you have to think about the relative purchasing power per unit of earnings. For example: Assume that you want to buy a piece of gear. One year ago, that piece of gear cost 5 gold and it takes you 1 hour to earn 5 gold. Today, that piece of gear costs 6 gold, but now you can earn 6 gold in 1 hour instead of 5. It’s all relative.
If I may suggest, Mr. Draghi from the European Central Bank has speech every 1st Thursday of the month.
He often explains why big inflation or deflation is bad for economy.
The response is ‘you have no idea what you are talking about, and I’m going to put as much effort into my responses as you’ve put into learning what you’re talking about.’
That is, none.
Exactly. There’s basically some point to which the TP-istas will entertain a discussion, when they feel they can safely dismiss the points being made, but once it starts getting real they all just scurry away to their corners rather than attempt to address the topic. I totally get it, but it’s still sad.
I just looked up vernacular inflation (english is my 2nd language) and i couldnt get a proper definition. I guess you mean the vernacular use of the word inflation by the majority of the player base but didnt the OP (and JS in several posts in other topics) just do that?
“Vernacular” means the definition that lay people have assumed by social contract, which is not always the academically correct definition of the term. Basically, it’s the definition most non-academics/professionals in a topic mean when they use the word. In this case, there is a very specific academic definition for the term “inflation” that is used by economists, and only economists know or care whether GW2’s economy fits that definition. Then there is another definition of the word that everyone else uses, which basically translates to “The stuff I pay attention to and would like to buy in the market keep getting more and more expensive.”
That definition actually matters to people playing the game, and GW2 definitely tends to meet that definition to most people, as while there are tons of “junk” items on the TP that are mostly used as trading tokens, the real value items just keep getting more and more expensive over time.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Then there is another definition of the word that everyone else uses, which basically translates to “The stuff I pay attention to and would like to buy in the market keep getting more and more expensive.”
The stuff that keeps getting mentioned as examples of ‘proletariat inflation’ do not behave in a manner consistent with proletariat inflation.
For example precursors, which had a price with essentially no structural movement until the wardrobe announcement. The announcement triggered a structural demand shock, resulting in a slow increase in prices as the market responded to find the new equilibrium price – which it seems to have found, evidenced by structurally stable prices for the past 6 weeks or so.
That is, prices were stable, then increased in response to a very obvious demand shock, then became stable again.
That is much different than ‘keeps getting more and more expensive.’
So, again, I’m not sure what it is we are discussing here.
The response is ‘you have no idea what you are talking about, and I’m going to put as much effort into my responses as you’ve put into learning what you’re talking about.’
That is, none.
Exactly. There’s basically some point to which the TP-istas will entertain a discussion, when they feel they can safely dismiss the points being made, but once it starts getting real they all just scurry away to their corners rather than attempt to address the topic. I totally get it, but it’s still sad.
Or they give up and call it a lost cause as someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. No matter how much you try to reason with them, it’s no use so why bother anymore.
For example precursors, which had a price with essentially no structural movement until the wardrobe announcement. The announcement triggered a structural demand shock, resulting in a slow increase in prices as the market responded to find the new equilibrium price – which it seems to have found, evidenced by structurally stable prices for the past 6 weeks or so.
And yet they have still settled higher than they were before, the price of Dawn has risen 300% since the end of 2012, doubled since this time last year. They may not follow the academic definition of an inflationary pattern, but “more expensive now than they were before” certainly fits the vernacular one just fine, whether that price increase happens gradually or in fits and starts.
Whatever the specific reasons are for those price increases, it would have been possible to offset them all by using specific remedies, which ANet has not yet done. If there is ever a demand shock, there should be a supply shock to account for it.
Or they give up and call it a lost cause as someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. No matter how much you try to reason with them, it’s no use so why bother anymore.
Sure, sure, I’m sure that’s what it is.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
For example precursors, which had a price with essentially no structural movement until the wardrobe announcement. The announcement triggered a structural demand shock, resulting in a slow increase in prices as the market responded to find the new equilibrium price – which it seems to have found, evidenced by structurally stable prices for the past 6 weeks or so.
And yet they have still settled higher than they were before, the price of Dawn has risen 300% since the end of 2012, doubled since this time last year. They may not follow the academic definition of an inflationary pattern, but “more expensive now than they were before” certainly fits the vernacular one just fine, whether that price increase happens gradually or in fits and starts.
Whatever the specific reasons are for those price increases, it would have been possible to offset them all by using specific remedies, which ANet has not yet done. If there is ever a demand shock, there should be a supply shock to account for it.
Or they give up and call it a lost cause as someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. No matter how much you try to reason with them, it’s no use so why bother anymore.
Sure, sure, I’m sure that’s what it is.
So demand for something goes up and in your opinion, Anet should simply rise the droprates?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Or they give up and call it a lost cause as someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. No matter how much you try to reason with them, it’s no use so why bother anymore.
Sure, sure, I’m sure that’s what it is.
Yep. I essentially gave up after this post:
I will though make one last attempt to further elaborate before I go to sleep.
Anet fill the role as regulators. You can think of the drop rate percentages and the sources as them passing regulations on supply. They, however, do not control supply. Nor do they control demand. Without players, you have neither. The GW2 economy is player-driven as a result.
Demand is set by players who determine, based on their own individual preferences, which items appeal to them. Not everyone have the same preferences. Supply is set by the actions of players as they explore Tyria and perform the various activities. We do not get Iron ore unless someone salvages drop loot or mines the nodes. Whether or not the item was purposely set out for is irrelevant. What I mean by this is that if a precursor drops, it’s still considered supply as it now exists in the game.
Your post was incorrect because you did not understand what exactly constitutes supply and demand including what creates it. This was why I pretty much gave up as there was no point in further discussing with you on this subject if you did not know that.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
So demand for something goes up and in your opinion, Anet should simply rise the droprates?
Not necessarily, but that would be one option. It’s not as if demand is completely unpredictable, most mid-long range flippers base their success on predicting which items are likely to increase in demand or reduce in supply, and ANet has inside knowledge on both of those things to work with.
So if ANet has reason to predict a demand spike, then they need to plan out the best way to introduce a supply spike of roughly equal measure. It may be a simple across the board drop rate increase, it may be adding the item to new tables (meaning more things that drop it would end up being killed/harvested without any additional effort on the players’ part), it may be adding a trader that trades some other common resource for it, or adding new MF or crafting recipes that create it, or tweaking the existing recipes to be more favorable, or any number of things, most of which they have done at some point in the past.
If the demand increase is expected to be long term, then they can make the change to something that would be relatively permanent. If the demand increase is likely to be a short term spike then they can do a more short term dump, like temporary vendors or drops tied to a single LW period. If there’s likely to be a short term spike that levels off to a long term higher level, they could implement both.
The best method for any specific item would depend, but I can’t imagine that there would ever be no way for them to increase supply in a manner that would keep the price stable (with of course a short term spike until players understand what’s going on). If they make a mistake and the demand spike is higher or lower than anticipated, then they can always pull back a bit or add in more, what’s important is to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
You’re essentially asking for them to set prices or at the very least a price ceiling.
You’re essentially asking for them to set prices or at the very least a price ceiling.
Sure, why not? They have a price floor in the vendor buy prices, and some items do have a ceiling in what vendors sell them for, why not have reasonable vague ceilings on other items? You guys seem to espouse that in general price stability is a good thing, so why shouldn’t they engage more effort to encourage it, rather than make moves that they know will cause prices to rise, and doing nothing to stop it?
Now I’m not saying they should have hard price caps, like say having every item available on a vendor for a set price which nobody would rationally attempt to go over, I’m just saying that when they make moves that will clearly cause demand or supply to change in a way that would lead to a major price shift, they should take steps to also shift the other side of the equation for a net zero shift (within a reasonable margin of error).
Now, if the players want to go crazy and bid up the price on something for no apparent reason, then there’s no reason for ANet to get involved in that, they don’t need to micromanage every single spike, but the big changes that are reasonably predictable, when they deliberately add demand to the market, they should try and stay on top of those.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
So demand for something goes up and in your opinion, Anet should simply rise the droprates?
Not necessarily, but that would be one option. It’s not as if demand is completely unpredictable, most mid-long range flippers base their success on predicting which items are likely to increase in demand or reduce in supply, and ANet has inside knowledge on both of those things to work with.
So if ANet has reason to predict a demand spike, then they need to plan out the best way to introduce a supply spike of roughly equal measure. It may be a simple across the board drop rate increase, it may be adding the item to new tables (meaning more things that drop it would end up being killed/harvested without any additional effort on the players’ part), it may be adding a trader that trades some other common resource for it, or adding new MF or crafting recipes that create it, or tweaking the existing recipes to be more favorable, or any number of things, most of which they have done at some point in the past.
If the demand increase is expected to be long term, then they can make the change to something that would be relatively permanent. If the demand increase is likely to be a short term spike then they can do a more short term dump, like temporary vendors or drops tied to a single LW period. If there’s likely to be a short term spike that levels off to a long term higher level, they could implement both.
The best method for any specific item would depend, but I can’t imagine that there would ever be no way for them to increase supply in a manner that would keep the price stable (with of course a short term spike until players understand what’s going on). If they make a mistake and the demand spike is higher or lower than anticipated, then they can always pull back a bit or add in more, what’s important is to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.
Do you know how much work that would entitle? I mean, there are tens of thousands tradeable items, they would need to employ dozens of data analysts (that also have a good knowledge of the game economy and be kept in the loop of future changes).
Apart from that, if they adjust droprates of existing loot tables or add items to it, all the research and info on the wiki would be obsolete evey 2 weeks.
Lets say they introduce a big faucet for charged lodestones. Everybody farms it and price goes down. At what point do they close the faucet? You cant just say, they adjust the droprate again, once supply and demand are in equilibrium because supply and demand are relative to the price.
Price for lodestones goes down 1g, demand goes up because more people can afford them, then the faucet gets closed, which limits supply and price goes up again.
I cant see anything good coming out of this. SPeculators would buy up supply after the droprate gets buffed and sell once it gets nerfed again.
You just unbalanced the whole economy.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Do you know how much work that would entitle? I mean, there are tens of thousands tradeable items, they would need to employ dozens of data analysts (that also have a good knowledge of the game economy and be kept in the loop of future changes).
Again, I’m not saying they need to be on top of every single item. I’m saying broad strokes. Employ the same basic predictions that amateur flippers do to make their profits. Any item that sees a significant price swing on the day of a patch, or the day that a feature is announced to the public, is something that someone working at ANet should have known would happen, and should have been on top of. They usually only make a couple of changes per LW patch that would have a significant economic impact, and are making at least a few in this current patch that have already had an impact. They just need to be aware of those and correct for them.
And of course some changes are partially self-correcting, for example they know that if they cause an increase in wood prices then it will cause an increase in the prices of things made of wood, so they can often just tweak one and deal with both.
In terms of unanticipated changes, all they’d need to do is run something like Spidy that’s designed to detect spikes in the curve on all items, and if they detect a significant spike that they didn’t predict, they can backtrace it and try to figure out why it’s happening, and if it makes sense to do so then they could implement a correction.
Apart from that, if they adjust droprates of existing loot tables or add items to it, all the research and info on the wiki would be obsolete evey 2 weeks.
Honestly, that wouldn’t be a problem for most users since they never check those in the first place, but ideally they would be more communicative about their changes. If they tweaked the drop rates, they should not do so silently (that would not serve the intended function of keeping the markets under control because people would not realize that the supply had been tweaked for weeks and in the meantime price would skyrocket), and they would not do so with a vague “we marginally increased the drop rates,” but with a firm “we raised the drop rates of [X item] from moldy bags from .5% to .75%, and reduced the drop rates of [common junk item] accordingly.”
They would just announce in plain English, “we added a recipe that will require each player that wants it to expend 250 Elder Logs per day for one month, but we added [a source of logs] that are meant to produce an additional [X amount] of Elder Logs per day, so no worries.” The exact method is up to them, cause trees to temporarily drop more bonus logs per swing, or provide more bonus swings, or drop more green/blue gear of the class that is made of logs, or more raw woody salvage mats, or have a bunch of popular oakheart enemies that drop logs, or whatever.
I don’t know why they’re so cagey about the drop rates in the game anyways, that players have to datamine guesses at the rates. I’m replaying TWEWY right now, and the drop rates are great in that game, you can just look at the enemy list in the options menu and see the exact drop rate of any given item at any time, including any drop rate modifiers you may have in play. There are even risk/reward modifiers you can adjust and see how it increases your rate from .5% to .1% as you do so.
Lets say they introduce a big faucet for charged lodestones. Everybody farms it and price goes down. At what point do they close the faucet? You cant just say, they adjust the droprate again, once supply and demand are in equilibrium because supply and demand are relative to the price.
Again, it’s all generally predictable to people who track these sorts of things. They would be adding the faucet because they added some new demand for it. If it’s likely a permanent demand, like an item that people will be crafting more or less forever, then they would add a permanent increase. If it’s a temporary one, one that most players will craft once within the month and never have to craft again, while occasional new players will get around to it, then they would have a huge spike that quickly trails off. They’ve done enough changes to the economy that they should have metrics for these curves. Prices would yo-yo slightly when the changes are implemented, but should stabilize within days or even hours if they are properly communicative about the change.
I cant see anything good coming out of this. SPeculators would buy up supply after the droprate gets buffed and sell once it gets nerfed again.
Sure, and so long as speculation is something one can do on the economy they’ll do that anyways, with or without this change in policy the TP farmers will get fed, but at least this way prices can remain low for the people without a ton of gold.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Do you know how much work that would entitle? I mean, there are tens of thousands tradeable items, they would need to employ dozens of data analysts (that also have a good knowledge of the game economy and be kept in the loop of future changes).
Again, I’m not saying they need to be on top of every single item. I’m saying broad strokes. Employ the same basic predictions that amateur flippers do to make their profits. Any item that sees a significant price swing on the day of a patch, or the day that a feature is announced to the public, is something that someone working at ANet should have known would happen, and should have been on top of. They usually only make a couple of changes per LW patch that would have a significant economic impact, and are making at least a few in this current patch that have already had an impact. They just need to be aware of those and correct for them.
SNIP
Can you give examples of items where they havent done it?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
I don’t know why you guys even bother with these threads.
You very clearly have several people who will defend anything JS or anet does without flinching and then you have some people who just don’t get it at all about the economy.
Ohoni has a point to some degree. Anet could very easily adjust some drop rates or use other methods as mentioned to curb drastic market shocks like for example the spike in iron ore that occurred during the end of the last LS. I think you are over exaggerating a bit Wanze when you act like they would need to “employ dozens of data analysts” to do this type of work. If you guys stop and take a deep breath from all the semantics games that these arguments turn into three posts in, maybe there could be a decent discussion here.
Otherwise just /thread
The only semantics going on is the obfuscation of the “I don’t like that this is too expensive for my tastes, so anet should intervene to make it cheaper” argument.
Normal inflation (the kind that results from economic growth, not supply/demand shocks) is only a problem for people who save money in currency form and money lenders.