Guild Wars 2

Essence Snow.3194:

The profit potential of most activities is limited by direct game mechanics. Trading however is not. Trading is only limited by indirect means. Thus most activities profit potential is linear where trading is exponential.

What does this do? It creates an ever widening wealth disparity between trading and everything else.

Why does that matter? Anet has decided to focus the reward structure in this game on gold. There inlies why continually increasing gold disparities matters. In this genre of game rewards are vital and player population is vital. A major aspect of player satisfaction is perceived fairness and a major factor of population is player satisfaction. This comes into play in games where if a player feels they are getting the short end of the stick (so to say) they can and do simply stop playing. This is not what we want. We want to take measures to retain as many possible players as possible and not funnel players into one area/aspect of the game. One of those measure applies to smoothing out inequalities. We see this across the board with only one major exception. We see it when one class is ridiculously OP (over powered), when one is ridiculously UP (under powered). We see it when one area offers an unbalanced amount of reward compared to the rest. We see it time and time again for good reason.

If we don’t smooth out inequalities we effectively funnel players or worse chance losing players.

There is also the gold seller/bot issue, but that is a whole other can of worms.

I think the most important thing that needs to be corrected about your position is that the reward structure is NOT based on gold, it is based on gems (the item that is used to monetize the game). You have the option to convert your time spent into gems, but that is not and was never intended to be the primary method by which gems are acquired.

Income disparity is therefore a non-issue, outside of personal instances of jealousy.

mtpelion.4562:

Essence Snow.3194:

The profit potential of most activities is limited by direct game mechanics. Trading however is not. Trading is only limited by indirect means. Thus most activities profit potential is linear where trading is exponential.

What does this do? It creates an ever widening wealth disparity between trading and everything else.

Why does that matter? Anet has decided to focus the reward structure in this game on gold. There inlies why continually increasing gold disparities matters. In this genre of game rewards are vital and player population is vital. A major aspect of player satisfaction is perceived fairness and a major factor of population is player satisfaction. This comes into play in games where if a player feels they are getting the short end of the stick (so to say) they can and do simply stop playing. This is not what we want. We want to take measures to retain as many possible players as possible and not funnel players into one area/aspect of the game. One of those measure applies to smoothing out inequalities. We see this across the board with only one major exception. We see it when one class is ridiculously OP (over powered), when one is ridiculously UP (under powered). We see it when one area offers an unbalanced amount of reward compared to the rest. We see it time and time again for good reason.

If we don’t smooth out inequalities we effectively funnel players or worse chance losing players.

There is also the gold seller/bot issue, but that is a whole other can of worms.

I think the most important thing that needs to be corrected about your position is that the reward structure is NOT based on gold, it is based on gems (the item that is used to monetize the game). You have the option to convert your time spent into gems, but that is not and was never intended to be the primary method by which gems are acquired.

Income disparity is therefore a non-issue, outside of personal instances of jealousy.

lol What? Can’t tell if serious……

Essence Snow.3194:

lol What? Can’t tell if serious……

Everything you NEED to play the game is available very inexpensively and thus does not require any significant quantity of time or in-game currency to acquire.

After that, the stuff you WANT (i.e. skins that offer no advantage) is going to cost real life money in the form of gem purchases.

Because everything you need is available easily, income disparity has NO IMPACT in the game for the general playerbase.

Idk if I can even reply to you anymore. Can you seriously believe that what players want in a game has no impact? If that’s the case…I’ll simply have to cease replying to you b/c that’s too far in left field for me.

Essence Snow.3194:

Idk if I can even reply to you anymore. Can you seriously believe that what players want in a game has no impact? If that’s the case…I’ll simply have to cease replying to you b/c that’s too far in left field for me.

Income disparity is ONLY a problem when it prevents people from obtaining items necessary for survival. In the real world, you can reach such a disparity that those with the wealth can actually use it to prevent others from surviving, though typically an economy will stagnate long before that point is reached as there is a lack of currency circulation.

Since everything that is necessary is practically free in this game, income disparity does not have an impact.

The problem is that some people incorrectly use the term “income disparity” to describe their lust for the large gold amounts that other people have, but are unwilling to put in the same effort those people did to acquire a similar large amount of gold.

Essence Snow.3194:

1. Is this really a valid justification?

Yes.

2. This applies how?

It points to the fact that both systems are completely different and thus expecting the same potential is daft. It also points to the fact that the TP system is not a gold pump, unlike the non TP derived system.

3. Anet puts restrictions on every activity if deemed to produce to much.

Yes, let’s make everything more complex by place more restrictions in the game which are not needed. The fact that Anet haven’t restricted the TP in the way some want should tell you all you need to know.

4. Measures can be taken to control influx of gold.

See response .3

5. Not sure what your point here is.

You want to impose limits on an income source which is not stable/normalized in the sense that pve profits are. Again it points to the fact that comparing the two systems and expecting them to have the same cap/return is daft.

6. TP risk can be minimized via use of 3rd party tools. These range from things like Spidy, spreadsheets, notifiers, and even bots. Other activities can include risks as events can fail and armor can incur costs (although minimal it’s not zero risk)

It is still higher risk and higher resource/seed capital dependant.

7. While they may not be the sole factor, they with out question are a contributing factor.

Please provide evidence which points to the need for nerfs.

8. Unfortunately we are not privy to the numbers. (I suspect for good reason….it would be scary to see the imbalance)

So no evidence then.

9. By all means play pve and see what kind of rewards that’ll get you if you want proof.

I have and others I know have pulled in 1k+ gold from pve in a month with zero TP flipping and zero lucky pre drops. You can make very large amounts of gold via pve, very quickly. Can you make as much as if you master the TP, or if you don’t have the time to farm or to speed run dungeons? No. But that was not the point made.

10. * They don’t need the same potential. They however do need to be in the same ball park. Playing the TP is not even remotely close to the rest of the “systems”.*

Please tell us how much you can potentially make from pve and how much you can from flipping. As I have already pointed out, if you have the time, inclination and ability, you can make massive amounts of gold from pve.

11*The game reward structure is set up around the trading post.*

Which in no way invalidates the fact that you can use limit orders yourself if you so wish.

12.There however are things stopping players from exponential profit potential in all other activities.

Doesn’t actually address the point made. Again, there is nothing to stop people attempting to profit from the TP.

Given that:

1.exponential vs linear

You keep saying that and yet I see no actual evidence, examples or numbers given.

2. creates an ever expanding wealth disparity

The evidence for this is where?

3. Again trading post risk can and is minimized by use of external tools and the “gold pump system” can be managed according to need as Anet controls most variables.

Still higher risk, still doesn’t address the fact that disparate systems do not need the same upside, still doesn’t mean that having to layer in more restrictive systems to combat a non issue is a good idea.

Is it really?

Yes.

The profit potential of most activities is limited by direct game mechanics. Trading however is not. Trading is only limited by indirect means. Thus most activities profit potential is linear where trading is exponential.

Yes it is limited and again, please provide evidence.

What does this do? It creates an ever widening wealth disparity between trading and everything else.

Evidence?

Why does that matter? <snip> We see it time and time again for good reason.

If we don’t smooth out inequalities we effectively funnel players or worse chance losing players.

There is also the gold seller/bot issue, but that is a whole other can of worms.

We need to see proof of this disparty and why it is harmful, not anecdotes. As for some players and their take on “fairness”, you do not balance a games systems or economy on the perception of a few people who think they are getting the short end of the stick.

Continued…

Q1. How much gold can you make via non TP methods and is there a limit on the number of players that can do as such enforced by mechanics or a competitive zero sum system?

Q2. How much gold can you make via TP methds and is there a limit on the number of players that can do as such enforced by mechanics or a competitive zero sum system?

Q3. How is any disparity found harmful to the economy, (please cite evidence)? Note, I am not asking about player perception, I am not asking for a moral based argument. I would like you to demonstrate that the disparity (using the figures you arrive at from Q1+Q2) is actually harmful to the games economy.

Q4. Are non TP players able to buy luxury items, yes or no?

Q5. Are non TP players able to buy the items they need for their non TP actitivies, yes or no?

I have other questions but flooding you with them is unfair. Again, I am more than willing to give a detailed set of answers if and when someone is able to demonstrate this sense of disparity and unfairness with explicit details and specifics.

I’m sure you genuinely believe that the current system is wrong, but I fail to see any actual evidence being given for that being the case, or any evidence as to why normalization is needed.

Behellagh.1468:

Infamous Darkness.3284:

ok so in gw2 looking at gem prices in the last year gems were about 100gems=2gold, this year 100gems=8gold, similarly the US economy took about 55 years to reach a similar rise in inflation effective to buying power, meaning that at the speed GW2 economy moves a single day in GW2 economy would be comparable to nearly two months in the US economy (DISCLAIMER: I used the time period between 1914 and 1969 to show this increase as getting closer to the 2000s inflation is shown to be much higher, but while looking back to 1775 to 1875 would have been equally ridiculous as it showed only about 14 percent inflation over 100 years http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php) but to get to the point of this, I believe this shows that flippers are indeed selling time as if a loan or for speculators maybe it would look more like buying futures.

Except the Gem Exchange rates are determined by scarcity of gems in the exchange relative to the exchange’s gold reserve. The more gems purchased with gold, the higher the rate goes because the exchange now has more gold in it’s coffers and less gems. The only way the exchange gets more gems is if players sell it gems for gold and that causes the rate to go down.

Today I’m noticing with spikes caused by the key sale that some players are taking the opportunity to buy gems with cash and convert them to gold. It broke 7g for 100 gems sold or over 5.6g per $1. If ANet quickly follows with more popular items I can see the gold to gem rate easily breaking 10g per 100 gems.

“And an awesome wailing was heard throughout heaven …”

Yes I understand that gems are a more finite(ish (more can be put in by people who buy gems with cash and then sell them ingame for gold)) resource in the game then currency is in real life, but the point still stands that the in-game economy moves at a much faster rate (in comparison to inflation) than in real life. meaning that inflation has a much greater effect on investments, ex. your gold today isn’t worth as much as it was yesterday. Basically talking about this still http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money

Players Of The World, Unite!

The proposition Shinzan has raised is not a new one. Free markets and their effects have been criticized and lamented for centuries.

For all its many pages, much of the argumentation in this thread seems to revisit this age-old debate without really resolving it.

And so, dear comrades, I ask in the more classical rhetorical sense: Should our guiding economic light be The Wealth of Nations or Das Kapital?

The masses await our collective decree — though in the end, only the bourgeoisie (aka the developers, as well as a flipper-full of shadowy Quaggan plutarchs) hold the true power in the Guild Wars 2 economy.

Essence Snow.3194:

The profit potential of most activities is limited by direct game mechanics. Trading however is not. Trading is only limited by indirect means. Thus most activities profit potential is linear where trading is exponential.

What does this do? It creates an ever widening wealth disparity between trading and everything else.

Why does that matter? Anet has decided to focus the reward structure in this game on gold. There inlies why continually increasing gold disparities matters. In this genre of game rewards are vital and player population is vital. A major aspect of player satisfaction is perceived fairness and a major factor of population is player satisfaction. This comes into play in games where if a player feels they are getting the short end of the stick (so to say) they can and do simply stop playing. This is not what we want. We want to take measures to retain as many possible players as possible and not funnel players into one area/aspect of the game. One of those measure applies to smoothing out inequalities. We see this across the board with only one major exception. We see it when one class is ridiculously OP (over powered), when one is ridiculously UP (under powered). We see it when one area offers an unbalanced amount of reward compared to the rest. We see it time and time again for good reason.
If we don’t smooth out inequalities we effectively funnel players or worse chance losing players.
There is also the gold seller/bot issue, but that is a whole other can of worms.

I actually dont see how the reward structure is based on gold entirely. As someone that has lots of it, there are plenty of items i cant obtain with them. Within the last 2 weeks, i got a backpack, the selfless potion, a helm skin, an ascended armor chest, a lesser vision crystal, I crafted 3 ascended armor pieces and got a couple of tomes of knowledge with glory. All those rewards were solely available to me through pve/pvp and I couldnt get them on the trading post. I also was only able to make a good amount of profit through copper→iron promotion by utilizing skillpoints (over 5g per skillpoint) which are also not available for gold, while anything on the tp can still be obtained through only pve rewards.

So in that terms, playing the tp for gold restricts you way more in obtaining rewards than pve does.

Majic.4801:

Players Of The World, Unite!

The proposition Shinzan has raised is not a new one. Free markets and their effects have been criticized and lamented for centuries.

For all its many pages, much of the argumentation in this thread seems to revisit this age-old debate without really resolving it.

And so, dear comrades, I ask in the more classical rhetorical sense: Should our guiding economic light be The Wealth of Nations or Das Kapital?

The masses await our collective decree — though in the end, only the bourgeoisie (aka the developers, as well as a flipper-full of shadowy Quaggan plutarchs) hold the true power in the Guild Wars 2 economy.

Does the Wealth of Nations or Das Kapital adress account bound mats?

No?

We should leave it out of this discussion then because its still a videogame.

Fenrir.3609:

Q1. How much gold can you make via non TP methods and is there a limit on the number of players that can do as such enforced by mechanics or a competitive zero sum system? Again JS (on behalf of Anet)withholds numbers from us. However we can (by experience) conclude that players are limited to how much they can make via activities other than playing the tp. For example: Can non tp methods consistently generate 1k g in a hour? (no, unless one has lottery winning luck…ie not consistently) Can tp methods do it? (yes, with enough investment it can be done consistently) The reason for this are direct mechanics….. Foe A only has chance to drop so much, events can only be completed so many times a day, DR, nodes have direct harvest amounts, etc etc…

Q2. How much gold can you make via TP methds and is there a limit on the number of players that can do as such enforced by mechanics or a competitive zero sum system?The amount of potential profit via playing the tp is not directly limited like all other activities. It is limited by tp inputs (this number is so high it effectively doesn’t matter in a general view) and the participants. If participation ever got to a level where it brought playing the tp in line with other activities…the game would most likely cease being an adventure genre mmorpg.

Q3. How is any disparity found harmful to the economy, (please cite evidence)? Note, I am not asking about player perception, I am not asking for a moral based argument. I would like you to demonstrate that the disparity (using the figures you arrive at from Q1+Q2) is actually harmful to the games economy.History has shown us time and time again how extreme disparity is harmful. All one needs to do is look to our past for our best indicator for our future. I described funneling and population in a prior post.

Q4. Are non TP players able to buy luxury items, yes or no? Loaded question but: Both yes and no. Some can some cannot. Some that play excessively can do so comfortably. Some can do so, but have to forgo other things to do so. Some simply cannot.

Q5. Are non TP players able to buy the items they need for their non TP actitivies, yes or no?Mostly yes, but this is in fact a game which exceed necessities.

I have other questions but flooding you with them is unfair. Again, I am more than willing to give a detailed set of answers if and when someone is able to demonstrate this sense of disparity and unfairness with explicit details and specifics.

I’m sure you genuinely believe that the current system is wrong, but I fail to see any actual evidence being given for that being the case, or any evidence as to why normalization is needed.

Just for kittens and giggles imagine if soloing lupi in <5mins gave a reward that was worth 2k gold to other players. Can any players do it? Yes Can a lot of players do it? No As more players are able to do it the worth of the item would decrease, yet still be far beyond any other reward in the game. Now some players would be earning 100s of 1000s of gold per day while most will be earning in the 10s. Is this okay?

well first the reward which by the way you are phrasing it seems to be an item, would have to be determined by the people buying said item, and it wouldn’t stay at that price for even a day (most likely), because there are enough people that can do it that they would provide competition in selling said item to continually lower the price until it got to a reasonable rate in comparison to work and skill to get said item.

Imagine that 2k is the settled price, sustained via tp traders and the low number of players able to complete the task.(the amount of players with 2k available would far surpass the amount of players able to farm the task and the amount of times they could repeat it in a given day)…ie the excessive reward for it is sustainable for the few who can do it.

Essence Snow.3194:

Now some players would be earning 100s of 1000s of gold per day while most will be earning in the 10s. Is this okay?

Yes, because this causes no problems for anyone.

Ohh c’mon, please don’t touch my tp. I’ve only made a few thousand gold from flipping and I still need to get legendaries for the rest of my alts. I was late to the flipping game so I still need to make up for the loss.

Essence Snow.3194:

Idk if I can even reply to you anymore. Can you seriously believe that what players want in a game has no impact? If that’s the case…I’ll simply have to cease replying to you b/c that’s too far in left field for me.

That’s not what he is saying at all. What is saying is that there is nothing in the game that requires gems in order to be defeated; everything necessary to play, win, and achieve the maximum capability of the character within the game is available through effort rather than money. The items available in the gem store provide either small bonuses, cosmetic differences, or a few ease-of-life features. There is nothing in there, however, that will give you a significant advantage over another player.

I will use myself as an example- All my weapons and armor are either hand crafted or found items. While I have not yet crafted any ascended items, judging from the weapons around me neither have most players. Further, while some of the ingredients necessary are available from the trading post, they are equally available to me through a bit of farming and combat work.

I honestly don’t have much use for my gold, and mostly use it for my fiancee’s benefit when she wants a new dye or weapon. So the fact that I only have about 30g while some other player has 200,000 is completely irrelevant. His wealth doesn’t stop me from soloing champs, solving jumping puzzles, or shoving a sword down Scarlet’s throat in order to finally shut her up, or making fun of my friend for constantly breaking her armor. The fact that he could buy my character ten times over is not going to slow down my filling in my vault in any meaningful way. Can I go out and buy every legendary on the TP? Nope! Nor would I really want to, considering I only really like three of them, and can only wield (at most) four at one time. Granted, I can’t buy them either, but there is nothing to stop me from going out and making them myself, and by the time I have harvested the necessary materials I will most likely have made enough to buy the precursors.

Personally, as the sort of casual player who is supposed to be most put out by the TP, I don’t see the harm in these guys getting rich off it. There’s more waiting for me at the end of a sword’s swing than there is sitting there playing ‘stock market lite’.

Essence Snow.3194:

Q1 Again JS (on behalf of Anet)withholds numbers from us. However we can (by experience) conclude that players are limited to how much they can make via activities other than playing the tp. For example: Can non tp methods consistently generate 1k g in a hour? (no, unless one has lottery winning luck…ie not consistently) Can tp methods do it? (yes, with enough investment it can be done consistently) The reason for this are direct mechanics….. Foe A only has chance to drop so much, events can only be completed so many times a day, DR, nodes have direct harvest amounts, etc etc…

If you can’t get the evidence you need, how are you expecting to convince us exactly? I know how much I can make via pve and I know that it is more than enough to buy any item I want in the game. Now as far as I am concerned any potential disparity has zero impact upon the game and until you give us actual, concrete evidence and specific details to the contrary, your argument is prone to weakness.

Q2. The amount of potential profit via playing the tp is not directly limited like all other activities. It is limited by tp inputs (this number is so high it effectively doesn’t matter in a general view) and the participants. If participation ever got to a level where it brought playing the tp in line with other activities…the game would most likely cease being an adventure genre mmorpg.

See .1.

Q3*History has shown us time and time again how extreme disparity is harmful. All one needs to do is look to our past for our best indicator for our future. I described funneling and population in a prior post.*

No, I’m not asking for “history has shown us” anecdotes, I would like you to present specifics.

Q4. Loaded question but: Both yes and no. Some can some cannot. Some that play excessively can do so comfortably. Some can do so, but have to forgo other things to do so. Some simply cannot.

And ofc, everyone flipping the market is a billionaire right? It was not at all a loaded question. It is being insinuated by the anti TP crowd that unless you flip the TP, you can’t afford “teh good stuffz”. That is patently flase.

Q5. Mostly yes, but this is in fact a game which exceed necessities.

I would be amazed if someone cannot buy the basics, as for it being a game which exceeds necessities, that is answered in .4, they can.

Just for kittens and giggles imagine if soloing lupi in <5mins gave a reward that was worth 2k gold to other players. Can any players do it? Yes Can a lot of players do it? No As more players are able to do it the worth of the item would decrease, yet still be far beyond any other reward in the game. Now some players would be earning 100s of 1000s of gold per day while most will be earning in the 10s. Is this okay?

If soloing lupi was a zero sum game in which all the groups loaded in at one time and had to fight each other before getting the kill. If it acted as a gold sink instead of a gold pump, if it offered fluctuating profits and took 100’s to 1000’s of gold just to enter the instance, gold which was at risk. If it paid out that profit over days/weeks and not instantly. If you could only make 10s via other methods. Then the analogy might be getting close, well no it would still be daft. I thank you for at least trying to debate this but that kind of stuff is a bit pointless.

You/others proclaim that the disparity is too large and yet give no actual evidence whatsoever as to the size of that disparity. “I am limited by events/pve but on the TP I can make infinite monehz” isn’t evidence.

You/others proclaim that the disparity is harmful to the game and yet give no actual evidence pointing to that being the case. Moreoever it has been pointed out that in fact, yes you can buy luxury items and make massive amounts of gold via non TP methods.

You/others state that an artificial limit should be enforced on the TP in order to normalize gains and yet as well as not giving any real evidence as to why that is needed, you also fail to take into accound the fact that no, completely disparate systems should not all have the same potential upside.

As it stands these are the facts:

1. You can make a large amount of gold in this game via non TP methods, more than enough gold to buy both the necessities and the end game luxury items.

2.There has been zero actual, specific evidence given to suggest that the TP in it’s current incarnation is driving a level of disparity in earnings which is harmful to the game (as attested to by fact 1).

Now if someone wants to argue that the TP needs to be nerfed, that the disparity is too large and that pve players can’t buy stuff. The onus is on them to actually provide the evidence for that being the case. Not on the people to refute it.

By the same token you cannot provide evidence that it is not doing harm. It’s unfortunate but because of the overall lack of information we have access to this is why it’s open to debate.

I think the most important thing that needs to be corrected about your position is that the reward structure is NOT based on gold, it is based on gems (the item that is used to monetize the game). You have the option to convert your time spent into gems, but that is not and was never intended to be the primary method by which gems are acquired.

Gold is more important than gems. You can buy gems with gold, and there are some things you can buy with gems, but almost everything in this game requires gold. Want a Selfless potion? 10 gold. Want a Gift of Blade recipe? 5 gold. Want a piece of ascended armor? Either spend tens of hours farming or more gold please. There is almost nothing in the game that can be purchased without gold, and very few things in the game that cannot be purchased with only gold.

I’ve spent some cash on gems to get things like character and bank expansions in the past, but I have never converted gold into gems to buy gem store stuff, nor have I ever converted gems into gold.

The problem is that some people incorrectly use the term “income disparity” to describe their lust for the large gold amounts that other people have, but are unwilling to put in the same effort those people did to acquire a similar large amount of gold.

The problem is, I have put in as much effort as them, if not considerably more so, I just put it into different ingame activities, ones that ANet designed to not be as rewarding as TP flipping. So that goes back to my balance argument, you’re basically justifying a Warrior that does 100 times more damage than any other class by saying that if a player doesn’t like it they should have rolled a Warrior. No, thank you, instead Anet should just balance them against the other classes.

Essence Snow.3194:

By the same token you cannot provide evidence that it is not doing harm. It’s unfortunate but because of the overall lack of information we have access to this is why it’s open to debate.

I’m not advocating nerfs to a system, there is zero onus on me to have to provide evidence to the contrary at the moment, especially given the fact that the pro nerf camp are providing no evidence which requires any real rebuttal.

As it happens, the very fact that people are more than capable of earning a very large amount of gold, more than enough to get the required items and the luxury ones, via non TP methods. In and of itself points to the fact that in the very least, the argument that “you can only get stuffz if you flip” is incorrect.

If someone is going to ask for a nerf and speaks about game breaking disparity. Then they really need to prove that is the case, citing evidence and going into explicit detail.

When and if someone comes up with that evidence and those details, then the onus will be on myself and the other pro TP camp posters to provide factually based, specific counter arguments.

In all seriousness, you cannot be suggesting that people agree with the need for nerfs based on an argument which is currently tantamount to a combination of moral grandstanding, players “feelings” and a shovel load of hyperbole?

Fenrir.3609:

Essence Snow.3194:

By the same token you cannot provide evidence that it is not doing harm. It’s unfortunate but because of the overall lack of information we have access to this is why it’s open to debate.

I’m not advocating nerfs to a system, there is zero onus on me to have to provide evidence to the contrary at the moment, especially given the fact that the pro nerf camp are providing no evidence which requires any real rebuttal.

As it happens, the very fact that people are more than capable of earning a very large amount of gold, more than enough to get the required items and the luxury ones, via non TP methods. In and of itself points to the fact that in the very least, the argument that “you can only get stuffz if you flip” is incorrect.

If someone is going to ask for a nerf and speaks about game breaking disparity. Then they really need to prove that is the case, citing evidence and going into explicit detail.

When and if someone comes up with that evidence and those details, then the onus will be on myself and the other pro TP camp posters to provide factually based, specific counter arguments.

In all seriousness, you cannot be suggesting that people agree with the need for nerfs based on an argument which is currently tantamount to a combination of moral grandstanding, players “feelings” and a shovel load of hyperbole?

When have I ever said “you can only get stuffz if you flip”?

I am simply providing a contrary viewpoint to many in this forum who are vested. I would hate for players to come in here and think everything is great without giving any thought that it might not be as such based on one tone of feedback.

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is, I have put in as much effort as them, if not considerably more so, I just put it into different ingame activities, ones that ANet designed to not be as rewarding as TP flipping. So that goes back to my balance argument, you’re basically justifying a Warrior that does 100 times more damage than any other class by saying that if a player doesn’t like it they should have rolled a Warrior. No, thank you, instead Anet should just balance them against the other classes.

If you’re going to go down the road of “adventuring should be as profitable as TP trading,” then where does that line get drawn? Are we then going to say that all activities within the game should be equally as profitable? Jumping puzzles should be as profitable as dungeons? PvP as profitable as fractals?

If you are playing the game for fun (which you should be), then I fail to see why you’d care if player X playing style Y nets Z gold/hour. You’re still having fun. If you’re not, then you’ve missed the point of playing the game. I have been playing for five months now. And in those five months, I have had to work exactly 0 minutes. Why? Because I’m having fun and don’t consider it work.

Essence Snow.3194:

When have I ever said “you can only get stuffz if you flip”?

I am simply providing a contrary viewpoint to many in this forum who are vested. I would hate for players to come in here and think everything is great without giving any thought that it might not be as such based on one tone of feedback.

Whilst i’m at this moment involved in a debate with you, I am in no way aiming everything at your good self and I appreciate you taking the time to put your views across. So no, I’m not suggesting you per say stated that, although it is somewhat insinuated within the whole disparity argument.

But take a look over the thread, others like it and even some of the recent posts. You will see plenty of “It’s just not fair I put in effort as well!!!!” and “only the nasty 1% who flip the TP can buy legendaries!!” kind of posts. The anti TP camp is full of moralizing and nerf crying, but provides precious little credible debate.

There is a fixed amount of gold that can be made from playing the trading post that depends mostly on the number and the behavior of farmers.

As a really oversimplified, if illustrative example, assume there’s a 10% margin to be made on any item bought via buy order, and that 50% of the stuff farmers sell on the TP is sold via sell order. Under those assumptions, the total pool of profit for flippers is 5% of the total output of farmers.

This number does not scale with the number of flippers; all of the flippers on the TP compete with each other for their share of that 5%.

That would mean that if you had, say, 10,000 farmers and 500 flippers, that farmers and flippers would have the same average income. 10,000 farmers and 1000 flippers? Farmers would make twice as much as flippers, on average; 20,000 farmers and 500 flippers? Flippers make twice as much on average.

Again, these numbers are just illustrative, and actually fluctuates a bit with the number of TP flippers (more TP flippers leads to increased competition, which shrinks the size of the pool to split); the point being that it is in all likelihood a small fraction of the total wealth generated in the game.

Ensign.2189:

There is a fixed amount of gold that can be made from playing the trading post that depends mostly on the number and the behavior of farmers.

As a really oversimplified, if illustrative example, assume there’s a 10% margin to be made on any item bought via buy order, and that 50% of the stuff farmers sell on the TP is sold via sell order. Under those assumptions, the total pool of profit for flippers is 5% of the total output of farmers.

This number does not scale with the number of flippers; all of the flippers on the TP compete with each other for their share of that 5%.

That would mean that if you had, say, 10,000 farmers and 500 flippers, that farmers and flippers would have the same average income. 10,000 farmers and 1000 flippers? Farmers would make twice as much as flippers, on average; 20,000 farmers and 500 flippers? Flippers make twice as much on average.

Again, these numbers are just illustrative, and actually fluctuates a bit with the number of TP flippers (more TP flippers leads to increased competition, which shrinks the size of the pool to split); the point being that it is in all likelihood a small fraction of the total wealth generated in the game.

Here’s something else to add to what you said, and it’s something I have said before. If the TP barons didn’t do what they do, there would more than likely be a lot more of the items having no buy price, which would force the regular player to do one of three things:

1) Put the stuff in their bank until a buy order is made
2) Place the item they want to sell in the TP for a price they decide in the hopes that it sells at some point.
3) Sell it to an NPC vendor, which would be less than what they can make, and also adds gold into the game instead of removing it, which would create inflation over a period of time.

Essence Snow.3194:

Just for kittens and giggles imagine if soloing lupi in <5mins gave a reward that was worth 2k gold to other players.

What form are you giving it out in?

Once there was a distinctive, unique reward for soloing Lupi quickly, players would flood Arah to learn how to do it. Sure, not a lot of players can do it now, but we are talking about a scripted encounter with set obstacles – it’s something really close to what a bot could do. Players would gear appropriately and practice the routine and learn how to do it. Whatever reward you stuck on it would flood the market until it hit equilibrium – a price that reflected the time people had put into learning how to do Lupi but was low enough to discourage a lot more people from jumping in.

If it was some sort of unique reward – exotics with unique skins or similar – then players that could solo Lupi quickly, and focused on farming him that way, would likely make outsized rewards compared to people on the frostgorge train. You’d probably see first mover profits in the hundreds of gold per hour, but expect that would be competed out quickly and you might be left with, say, 15-20g per hour.

If you gave out huge, general rewards – say, tons of mats and rares – then you’d crash the price of everything in the game until lupi incomes reflected that 15-20g per hour mark. That would depress the incomes of everyone else in the game, who would then be acquiring mats that were being flooded by the lupi farmers. This would reinforce itself as more people were driven to farm lupi; in the worst case, farming lupi becomes the way you play GW2 endgame PvE.

If you gave out a gigantic pile of gold (100g, 1000g, whatever), then you’d just have massive inflation. That would be the real gold spigot, the price of real goods would rise to match the amount of gold pouring into the economy, and while it would eventually settle into a similar equilibrium (lupi farmers making 2x what the frostgorge train farmers make, for instance) the price level of everything else in the game would be dramatically higher, and raw gold rewards from elsewhere in the game would no longer be worth anything – far fewer people would run dungeons, etc.

The big problem with something like this is that it scales. If lupi gives outsized rewards, all the farmers would move to killing lupi until such a time that it no longer gave outsized rewards – and would be flooding the market until that happened. TP traders, on the other hand, beat each other up for a small slice of the pie that is left on the table by inefficient selling by the farmers. There is nothing they can do to increase the size of the pie; all they can do is take it from others.

TChalla.7146:

Here’s something else to add to what you said, and it’s something I have said before. If the TP barons didn’t do what they do, there would more than likely be a lot more of the items having no buy price…

Indeed. I think there’s a feeling that giant chunks of wealth are being made entirely through spread trading (simultaneous buy and sell orders making money off the large gap between them). I can’t deny that there’s some money there, but it is not a spigot lavishing enormous amounts of gold onto people.

The fortunes made quickly on the TP almost entirely involve opening, salvaging, crafting, and/or forging one set of goods into another, more valuable set of goods. Every single one of these is a value adding activity, and the wealth is coming from that value added.

I don’t think of it that way, and I’m pretty sure most players would think of what I’m doing as working the TP, but essentially what I’m doing is vertically integrated, opportunistic crafting. I am not in any way unique, and I wonder if people would be as hostile to people ‘getting rich off the TP’ if their conception was of crafters and not spread traders.

Ensign.2189:

TChalla.7146:

Here’s something else to add to what you said, and it’s something I have said before. If the TP barons didn’t do what they do, there would more than likely be a lot more of the items having no buy price…

Indeed. I think there’s a feeling that giant chunks of wealth are being made entirely through spread trading (simultaneous buy and sell orders making money off the large gap between them). I can’t deny that there’s some money there, but it is not a spigot lavishing enormous amounts of gold onto people.

The fortunes made quickly on the TP almost entirely involve opening, salvaging, crafting, and/or forging one set of goods into another, more valuable set of goods. Every single one of these is a value adding activity, and the wealth is coming from that value added.

I don’t think of it that way, and I’m pretty sure most players would think of what I’m doing as working the TP, but essentially what I’m doing is vertically integrated, opportunistic crafting. I am not in any way unique, and I wonder if people would be as hostile to people ‘getting rich off the TP’ if their conception was of crafters and not spread traders.

My thoughts on it would remain the same as long as the 1 avenue was far beyond others. It wouldn’t matter if it were pvp tourneys, dungeons, event farming, etc etc….

Essence Snow.3194:

My thoughts on it would remain the same as long as the 1 avenue was far beyond others. It wouldn’t matter if it were pvp tourneys, dungeons, event farming, etc etc….

Here’s the issue though… the Trading Post needs to work the way it does to accommodate everyone playing how they want to play. And again, someone else making more money than the next guy shouldn’t matter one iota as long as everyone is having fun. Does someone else making more money than you cause you to not have fun? If so, you might want to ask yourself why that bothers you so much. If not, good. Then go have fun.

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

My thoughts on it would remain the same as long as the 1 avenue was far beyond others. It wouldn’t matter if it were pvp tourneys, dungeons, event farming, etc etc….

Here’s the issue though… the Trading Post needs to work the way it does to accommodate everyone playing how they want to play. And again, someone else making more money than the next guy shouldn’t matter one iota as long as everyone is having fun. Does someone else making more money than you cause you to not have fun? If so, you might want to ask yourself why that bothers you so much. If not, good. Then go have fun.

It doesn’t NEED to at all. There are other ways. The reason it is the way it is, is b/c it’s easy. It doesn’t require any more creative thought.

Again idk how many times I have to repeat this……It’s not about individuals…it’s about the game as a whole. I personally flip and speculate, but I also recognize it’s not remotely balanced (which is why I do it). I believe while in my best interests, it’s not in the best interest of the game as a whole.

Ensign.2189:

TChalla.7146:

Here’s something else to add to what you said, and it’s something I have said before. If the TP barons didn’t do what they do, there would more than likely be a lot more of the items having no buy price…

Indeed. I think there’s a feeling that giant chunks of wealth are being made entirely through spread trading (simultaneous buy and sell orders making money off the large gap between them). I can’t deny that there’s some money there, but it is not a spigot lavishing enormous amounts of gold onto people.

The fortunes made quickly on the TP almost entirely involve opening, salvaging, crafting, and/or forging one set of goods into another, more valuable set of goods. Every single one of these is a value adding activity, and the wealth is coming from that value added.

I don’t think of it that way, and I’m pretty sure most players would think of what I’m doing as working the TP, but essentially what I’m doing is vertically integrated, opportunistic crafting. I am not in any way unique, and I wonder if people would be as hostile to people ‘getting rich off the TP’ if their conception was of crafters and not spread traders.

Exactly. I almost never spread trade. Most of what i buy and sell directly (not store) has been altered one way or they other (crafting, salvaging etc.). Then i do a good chunk of speculating, where i store items that i bought low now and will sell at a later point when demand is higher.

Essence Snow.3194:

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

My thoughts on it would remain the same as long as the 1 avenue was far beyond others. It wouldn’t matter if it were pvp tourneys, dungeons, event farming, etc etc….

Here’s the issue though… the Trading Post needs to work the way it does to accommodate everyone playing how they want to play. And again, someone else making more money than the next guy shouldn’t matter one iota as long as everyone is having fun. Does someone else making more money than you cause you to not have fun? If so, you might want to ask yourself why that bothers you so much. If not, good. Then go have fun.

It doesn’t NEED to at all. There are other ways. The reason it is the way it is, is b/c it’s easy. It doesn’t require any more creative thought.

Again idk how many times I have to repeat this……It’s not about individuals…it’s about the game as a whole. I personally flip and speculate, but I also recognize it’s not remotely balanced (which is why I do it). I believe while in my best interests, it’s not in the best interest of the game as a whole.

So I’ll ask the question again. How could it be worked differently without hurting the playerbase as a whole? I’ve said why I think it needs to work as it does. I need to see another way that doesn’t hurt the players, regardless of how they play or how much time they play. And hurting any form of player type hurts the game.

Read back through the thread…I’ve already stated some things, but ofc not all and in no way think the ones I listed are the best, only viable, or easily implemented.

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

My thoughts on it would remain the same as long as the 1 avenue was far beyond others. It wouldn’t matter if it were pvp tourneys, dungeons, event farming, etc etc….

Here’s the issue though… the Trading Post needs to work the way it does to accommodate everyone playing how they want to play. And again, someone else making more money than the next guy shouldn’t matter one iota as long as everyone is having fun. Does someone else making more money than you cause you to not have fun? If so, you might want to ask yourself why that bothers you so much. If not, good. Then go have fun.

It doesn’t NEED to at all. There are other ways. The reason it is the way it is, is b/c it’s easy. It doesn’t require any more creative thought.

Again idk how many times I have to repeat this……It’s not about individuals…it’s about the game as a whole. I personally flip and speculate, but I also recognize it’s not remotely balanced (which is why I do it). I believe while in my best interests, it’s not in the best interest of the game as a whole.

So I’ll ask the question again. How could it be worked differently without hurting the playerbase as a whole? I’ve said why I think it needs to work as it does. I need to see another way that doesn’t hurt the players, regardless of how they play or how much time they play. And hurting any form of player type hurts the game.

It doesn’t need to be worked differently because those that complain about “balance” have been unable to not only provide evidence which suggests said imbalance is harmful, but even to explain exactly what that imbalance is.

Some people assume that because a small number of players are able to have a higher profit ceiling through TP activities than those who stay purely “off the TP grid”, that this somehow automatically is “unfair, unbalanced and harmful” to the game in general. Ofc, there is zero evidence which actually supports this position.

Fenrir.3609:

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

TChalla.7146:

Essence Snow.3194:

My thoughts on it would remain the same as long as the 1 avenue was far beyond others. It wouldn’t matter if it were pvp tourneys, dungeons, event farming, etc etc….

Here’s the issue though… the Trading Post needs to work the way it does to accommodate everyone playing how they want to play. And again, someone else making more money than the next guy shouldn’t matter one iota as long as everyone is having fun. Does someone else making more money than you cause you to not have fun? If so, you might want to ask yourself why that bothers you so much. If not, good. Then go have fun.

It doesn’t NEED to at all. There are other ways. The reason it is the way it is, is b/c it’s easy. It doesn’t require any more creative thought.

Again idk how many times I have to repeat this……It’s not about individuals…it’s about the game as a whole. I personally flip and speculate, but I also recognize it’s not remotely balanced (which is why I do it). I believe while in my best interests, it’s not in the best interest of the game as a whole.

So I’ll ask the question again. How could it be worked differently without hurting the playerbase as a whole? I’ve said why I think it needs to work as it does. I need to see another way that doesn’t hurt the players, regardless of how they play or how much time they play. And hurting any form of player type hurts the game.

It doesn’t need to be worked differently because those that complain about “balance” have been unable to not only provide evidence which suggests said imbalance is harmful, but even to explain exactly what that imbalance is.

Some people assume that because a small number of players are able to have a higher profit ceiling through TP activities than those who stay purely “off the TP grid”, that this somehow automatically is “unfair, unbalanced and harmful” to the game in general. Ofc, there is zero evidence which actually supports this position.

I’m in agreement with you on it. However, the claim was that they could have done it differently and took the lazy way. I believe that the TP works perfectly given the way the game is designed as a whole. I wanted to see suggestions to see if it is actually even possible to do it differently. I’m reading through the suggestions now.

Essence Snow.3194:

Read back through the thread…I’ve already stated some things, but ofc not all and in no way think the ones I listed are the best, only viable, or easily implemented.

I read your statements again and you didnt suggest much. You only suggested to rework rewards in general, make them more bound to achievements and less dependable on gold. I dont even disagree with you there but didnt Anet already implement this in so many ways?
Just from the last 2 patches you got the Halo, Horns, Backpack and the Mask that are not obtainable on the TP.
Ascended Gear isnt obtainable on the TP (and Legendaries shouldnt be either).

You want Anet to reduce the amount of tradeable goods but i dont see how that reduces the possible profit to be made on the TP. It doesnt matter if there are 500k or 100k items tradeable, you will always have markets for great profit.

If you havent listed all your suggestions and not the best ones, why not do so because this topic really lacks some good ideas on how to reduce the possible profit on the tp without hurting the general player base.

Essence Snow.3194:

Off the top of my head….

Reducing direct gold inputs. This would include less coin drops and less items directly converted to coin….ie less merched rewards. To balance this there would need to be an increase in non-converted rewards. It’s a balancing act so we’d need to make sure it didn’t tilt too far to one side or another.

Entry fees to coveted rewards. This is sorta like UW/FOW from GW1. Players wanting a chance at a certain reward item pay an entrance fee to have access to content providing said rewards.

Less focus on gold in general. Shifting focus from gold to item rewards should encourage less gold farming and more item specific farming/adventuring.

The magic find rework was genius. It not only reworked the mf debacle, but it also acts as a preventative measure to curb inflation. More implementations of things of this nature would greatly benefit this objective.

Okay… I found these suggestions. And here’s my response to these:

The first suggestion is troublesome, because so much of what we get as rewards we cannot use. The little trinkets to be sold can’t be used. As a necromancer that plays almost solely as a necromancer, any medium or heavy armor I find cannot be used in it’s current form. Even light armor can’t be used most times, since it doesn’t have the right combination of bonuses. So it all gets salvaged. And what would I do with the salvaged materials if I couldn’t sell it if I didn’t want to craft? And if gold drops were lessened, who would actually buy it? And if the only other option is to toss it, then what’s the point of even playing? I don’t want to play the entire game in the hopes that I can get exactly the right drop for what I need, when right now I can take what I don’t want, sell it to someone that does want it, and buy what I actually do want. It’s simple.

The next two suggestions introduce grind. Now, I’m not confusing the definition of grind as I’ve seen it so many times. In each one of these instances, you are forcing players to play in a specific way. If you attach any reward to a specific playstyle (jumping puzzle, dungeon, fractal), you isolate players. This game wasn’t created to do that, and although they have done this in the past, doing it even more would cause players of any style to be ticked off that they are now forced to do X.

I can’t respond to the magic find response, since it’s been the way it is since I started playing. I don’t know what it was like before.

Wanze.8410:

I read your statements again and you didnt suggest much. You only suggested to rework rewards in general, make them more bound to achievements and less dependable on gold. I dont even disagree with you there but didnt Anet already implement this in so many ways?
Just from the last 2 patches you got the Halo, Horns, Backpack and the Mask that are not obtainable on the TP.
Ascended Gear isnt obtainable on the TP (and Legendaries shouldnt be either).

The game is largely focused on casual players, and having most items obtainable with a single currency supports this. There are many items that cannot be bought with gold – dungeon armors, gear for fractals, many LS rewards, WvW gear… These items are presented as rewards to dedicated players and are largely out of reach of casual players. If those activities were more popular then they would develop more rewards for them, but the majority of players are focused on making gold so the devs concentrate on that.

Ascended gear represents a reversal of their treatment of Legendaries, it’s pretty obvious they realized that allowing precursors/legendaries to be sold directly on the TP was a mistake because these items are not intended for casual players. Those items that are intended for casuals should be obtainable with gold, because gold can be obtained through nearly every activity in the game.

And more importantly, time-poor but cash-rich casual players can buy gems with real world money and convert those gems to gold to buy the items they want or need to play the game the way they want to play. If new items cannot be obtained this way or if rampant inflation raises prices much faster than the conversion rate can support, it harms the experiences of these casual players, and losing that income hurts the game as a whole.

Anet devs knew what they were doing when they set up the TP, and they did it this way for a purpose. Though the implementation was not perfect, they take steps to correct mistakes (such as the Legendary/Ascended thing) and making money through the TP is far more fair and easily available than in real life markets. The proposed solutions are not in any way “fair” for everyone, they alter the balance of the economy to favor those who play like the poster making the proposal and generally harm the game for everyone over time.

You can debate the fairness of the proposals all you want, as has already been pointed out, those arguing against the current system have no evidence to support their position, and JS – the person with more knowledge of the subject and more data about the game than any player – has already said that these proposals will only harm the game and so there is absolutely no chance that these arguments will lead to any real changes.

The market system in Eve Online has been operating for close to a decade, and people make billions of isk through it on a monthly basis. No-one complains that it needs to be fixed or changed other than QoL issues. You buy, you list, you pay taxes, and it works just fine. Has for a long time. If there was an issue it would have been fixed because Eve players will raise hell if something is broken.

The trading post in GW2 operates the same way. buy, list, pay taxes, etc., but with the added benefit that your competitor can’t declare war and blow you up for undercutting him.

There is nothing to “balance” with the trading post. It is working as intended.

I agree with most people here that the real gold to be made is through one or two step — buying, salvaging, forging, selling, or something similar. But let’s not kid ourselves that there is not a ton of gold to be made working the spreads, especially in the days surrounding patches or updates. But even then, I question what the problem with this is.

Everyone needs to accept that the TP is a remarkable tool for anet to analyze trends and subsequently change drop rates. No data analysis can fully predict what players will do, and the wisdom of crowds is a fantastic way for them to kitten the economy and then provide stimulus accordingly. As I mentioned in another post, I see very few negative externalities to the (mostly) free market as it currently exists, aside from perhaps a little higher prices of top-shelf items.

Neural.1824:

The trading post in GW2 operates the same way. buy, list, pay taxes, etc., but with the added benefit that your competitor can’t declare war and blow you up for undercutting him.

Genius! Make it so… Okay, TP is fixed now.

As it happens, the very fact that people are more than capable of earning a very large amount of gold, more than enough to get the required items and the luxury ones, via non TP methods. In and of itself points to the fact that in the very least, the argument that “you can only get stuffz if you flip” is incorrect.

It’s less that “you can only get good stuff if you flip,” and more that “getting the good stuff without flipping takes an inordinate amount of really tedious behavior, whereas it takes considerably less time and effort to get the same rewards via flipping.”

It’s about a balance of time/effort vs reward, which currently doesn’t exist. If there were a dungeon where you were expected to have to run through 2-3 bosses and an hour’s worth of enemies and obstacles to receive a prize, but someone figured out a way to skip all that and clear the thing with very minimal effort in under five minutes, and receive 95% of the total rewards for the dungeon, wouldn’t you expect them to want to kill that exploit? Would you seriously blame them if they did?

If you’re going to go down the road of “adventuring should be as profitable as TP trading,” then where does that line get drawn? Are we then going to say that all activities within the game should be equally as profitable? Jumping puzzles should be as profitable as dungeons? PvP as profitable as fractals?

Sure, within reasonable margins and accounting for potential loopholes. For example, if they boosted the profitability of JPs, they would probably have to do something about sherpaing and camping the chests, otherwise that would just get sick, but if you were forced to legitimately do a JP from start to finish each time you claimed the reward, I could see it being as rewarding as a dungeon that required a similar investment of time and effort. Why not? And PvP looks to be on the path to that level of rewardability already, although personally I wish that they kept the PvP side distinct from the PvE side (equally as rewarding but along a completely separate track).

Of course it would be impossible to balance each activity perfectly, but I don’t see why they can’t balance them to within a reasonable margin of error, like maybe you’d earn half as much doing one thing than another, but there’s no reason why you should be earning hundreds of times less for it.

If you are playing the game for fun (which you should be), then I fail to see why you’d care if player X playing style Y nets Z gold/hour. You’re still having fun.

I think this is a rather pointless argument. If I’m complaining about it then clearly I’m not satisfied. Arguing that I should be satisfied isn’t likely to produce any positive results. I do enjoy the game as I’m playing it, but I would enjoy it more if I could afford a lot of the cool stuff that I currently can’t, and likely never will be able to afford, because the activities I do enjoy don’t reward at a rate that keeps up with inflation. I have eight level 80s and zero legendaries, and almost no ascended gearing, to fully gear them up would take at least ten times if not twenty times more cash than I’ve earned in total since launch from playing the game daily.

I don’t want these things enough to spend most of my time pouring over charts, watching the BLTC UI shift around, or paying to join one of those “How to make gold in GW2” sites, and I don’t even care to waste my ingame time running champ trains for hours per day, but I still want to be able to achieve those goals, and I don’t believe that’s an unreasonable goal that the game should be incapable of supporting.

That would mean that if you had, say, 10,000 farmers and 500 flippers, that farmers and flippers would have the same average income. 10,000 farmers and 1000 flippers? Farmers would make twice as much as flippers, on average; 20,000 farmers and 500 flippers? Flippers make twice as much on average.

All true. All irrelevant. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether flippers or farmers make less as a group, what matters is individual achievement, how much does each player make for himself. Flippers obviously make less money than the market as a whole, because every copper they bring in has to come at some other payer’s expense, but individually they collect more money in total than other players bring in, because they take their money from many players.

Here’s something else to add to what you said, and it’s something I have said before. If the TP barons didn’t do what they do, there would more than likely be a lot more of the items having no buy price, which would force the regular player to do one of three things:

1) Put the stuff in their bank until a buy order is made
2) Place the item they want to sell in the TP for a price they decide in the hopes that it sells at some point.
3) Sell it to an NPC vendor, which would be less than what they can make, and also adds gold into the game instead of removing it, which would create inflation over a period of time.

1. Normal players place buy orders too. There would be plenty of buy and sell orders in the game even without flippers.

2. There are outside sites like spidey that track sales, so even if no current buy orders exist, there would be historical ones to use as reference.

3. Ideally the game could provide more information than it does, including historical buy orders when current ones are unavailable, or even better (as I noted a few pages back), list the actual average transaction prices that items have actually moved for recently.

Exactly. I almost never spread trade. Most of what i buy and sell directly (not store) has been altered one way or they other (crafting, salvaging etc.). Then i do a good chunk of speculating, where i store items that i bought low now and will sell at a later point when demand is higher.

Ok, so let’s implement Bind on Purchase then, see how that works out, and if there’s still a problem we can move on to tackling that too.

I need to see another way that doesn’t hurt the players, regardless of how they play or how much time they play. And hurting any form of player type hurts the game.

A cure to a problem doesn’t necessarily need to have zero negative consequences, so long as the benefits outweigh the negatives. Any fix to the TP will inevitably annoy people that enjoy working the TP like a rented mule, there’s no way around that, but it would be better for the game as a whole.

Just from the last 2 patches you got the Halo, Horns, Backpack and the Mask that are not obtainable on the TP.

But several of them also require gold. Too many of the items require both a “content” ingredient and a “gold” ingredient. Take the Heirloom vendors. Make it so that everything they offer goes for ONLY heirlooms, no gold. Take the Spinal Blades backpacks, make them use JUST blades, no iron ore, or if they do require iron ore, put packs of account-bound iron ore on the Belongings vendors for reasonable amounts of belongings. Basically, if they are taking the tack that “gold is for TP flippers, everyone else is just a scrub when it comes to gold, and that’s fine by us,” then they need to own that position by making gold completely irrelevant as a currency to anyone who doesn’t want to be a TP flipper. As I noted above, I have enough bloodstone, empyrials, and dragonite to make full ascended gear for dozens of characters, but without the gold to buy all the T6/T7 mats I need to actually craft the armors, I haven’t been able to make a single piece yet, so those “earnable only” mats just end up taking up half the inventory space I have across my eight characters.

The market system in Eve Online has been operating for close to a decade, and people make billions of isk through it on a monthly basis. No-one complains that it needs to be fixed or changed other than QoL issues. You buy, you list, you pay taxes, and it works just fine. Has for a long time. If there was an issue it would have been fixed because Eve players will raise hell if something is broken.

Yes, but EVE is a market game. That is the entire point of the game, to make money. Examples from EVE should not be applied to other games. If you do enjoy TP flipping though, go play EVE instead.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, but EVE is a market game. That is the entire point of the game, to make money. Examples from EVE should not be applied to other games. If you do enjoy TP flipping though, go play EVE instead.

Or, we can continue to play GW2 with the system that it currently has, which is the same model, and not worry about what other people are making in game.

If you find what you’re doing to make gold grindy in any way, I suggest finding a way to make money in the way that you do enjoy making it. The fact that it may be slower than someone else’s way doesn’t mean a thing, unless you’re worried about getting X item is Y time, and if that’s the case, then you get to make the choice to do something else.

I’m done with this conversation, since the current system is in no way broken, and to be honest, the complaints I’ve seen about the current system sound more like jealousy than anything else.

Sorta in the same way that championing of the current system reeks of greed, selfishness, and vain attributes more so than anything else?

See how that works? Bring in jealousy and it’s basically the same deal. It is not adding to anything to the topic at hand, an ad hominem if you will.

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, so let’s implement Bind on Purchase then, see how that works out, and if there’s still a problem we can move on to tackling that too.

A cure to a problem doesn’t necessarily need to have zero negative consequences, so long as the benefits outweigh the negatives. Any fix to the TP will inevitably annoy people that enjoy working the TP like a rented mule, there’s no way around that, but it would be better for the game as a whole.

Just from the last 2 patches you got the Halo, Horns, Backpack and the Mask that are not obtainable on the TP.

But several of them also require gold. Too many of the items require both a “content” ingredient and a “gold” ingredient. Take the Heirloom vendors. Make it so that everything they offer goes for ONLY heirlooms, no gold. Take the Spinal Blades backpacks, make them use JUST blades, no iron ore, or if they do require iron ore, put packs of account-bound iron ore on the Belongings vendors for reasonable amounts of belongings. Basically, if they are taking the tack that “gold is for TP flippers, everyone else is just a scrub when it comes to gold, and that’s fine by us,” then they need to own that position by making gold completely irrelevant as a currency to anyone who doesn’t want to be a TP flipper. As I noted above, I have enough bloodstone, empyrials, and dragonite to make full ascended gear for dozens of characters, but without the gold to buy all the T6/T7 mats I need to actually craft the armors, I haven’t been able to make a single piece yet, so those “earnable only” mats just end up taking up half the inventory space I have across my eight characters.

I already said, Bind on purchase will not change the fact that I will be making more gold on the TP than through other means. So why do you want to implement it, if your goal is to take profit off tp traders? It will just hurt the general player base and even if they would be fine with it, why should Anet allocate alot of resources towards a complicated system change, if it doesnt serve the initial purpose of cutting profits on the TP?

The extra charge of gold for the recipe or horns clearly is intended as a gold sink. As i have no data of how much gold actually goes into the different sinks in game, i guess Anet seemed it reasonable to put one into the aquisition of those items. But that doesnt mean that they arent obtainable for the casual player. The amount of Alliance Supply bags that you get while farming the required blade shards, drop enough loot to make up for the gold price tag.
Paying 6g for 30 each Iron and Steel Ingots on the TP my seem expensive but with the abundance of rich iron ores in the game, it doesnt take more than an hour to harvest 120 iron ores. If that is too much time invested for you, i suggest to open your alliance supply bags on a low lvl character. You will get mostly low lvl blue/green armor and weapon drops, which salvage into t2 common mats while still having a chance for a pre cursor drop. So its not the case that you HAVE to play the tp in order to get those horns and halos. I would actually argue that it takes more time to farm the 250 heirlooms than the 10 gold via pve only.

The crafting costs for the ascended backpack are more or less in line with the costs of other ascended backpacks.

If you have enough dragonite, shards and dust to make several armor sets but no gold or crafting materials to level your crafting, i wonder what you do with all the gold and mats that drop for you.

TChalla.7146:

Okay… I found these suggestions.

Thank you for putting them all in one place.

Essence Snow.3194:

Reducing direct gold inputs.

This moves the decimal point around. I don’t think anyone really cares if they make 4g an hour with precursors that cost 700g, vs making 40 silver an hour with precursors that cost 70g. The rate that gold drops in the aggregate just moves the numbers on the trading post up and down in unison; it doesn’t change time or relative values at all.

Essence Snow.3194:

Entry fees to coveted rewards.

You could probably squeeze a little more variance into the PvE income distribution with something like that; the fee acts as a bit of a gate against total pugs and prices would reflect the average entry fees paid to get anything exclusive from there. Doesn’t really affect aggregate ratios of incomes on the TP to incomes from PvE – this is all about creating more differentiation between organized and disorganized incomes.

Essence Snow.3194:

Less focus on gold in general.

If more stuff is account bound, you don’t really change the distribution of gold income at all (it is not affected by account bound stuff on the whole), you just make it matter less by having a set of wealth that doesn’t ever hit the TP. The downside? Any reward that cannot be traded is inherently much less valuable than one that can be traded; if it’s a skin or item you actually want to use, great! Otherwise it’s basically more vendor trash.

This is particular pernicious in a game where most of the end game, high value items are skins; consider how little people in general value doing fractals, despite having unique account bound rewards (in the rings and weapon skins); with so much of the reward value locked up in non-transferable rewards, the dungeon loses its reward structure once you have them (or if you don’t value fractal weapon skins).

TChalla.7146:

Okay… I found these suggestions.

Thank you for putting them all in one place.

Essence Snow.3194:

Reducing direct gold inputs.

This moves the decimal point around. I don’t think anyone really cares if they make 4g an hour with precursors that cost 700g, vs making 40 silver an hour with precursors that cost 70g. The rate that gold drops in the aggregate just moves the numbers on the trading post up and down in unison; it doesn’t change time or relative values at all.

Essence Snow.3194:

Entry fees to coveted rewards.

You could probably squeeze a little more variance into the PvE income distribution with something like that; the fee acts as a bit of a gate against total pugs and prices would reflect the average entry fees paid to get anything exclusive from there. Doesn’t really affect aggregate ratios of incomes on the TP to incomes from PvE – this is all about creating more differentiation between organized and disorganized incomes.

Essence Snow.3194:

Less focus on gold in general.

If more stuff is account bound, you don’t really change the distribution of gold income at all (it is not affected by account bound stuff on the whole), you just make it matter less by having a set of wealth that doesn’t ever hit the TP. The downside? Any reward that cannot be traded is inherently much less valuable than one that can be traded; if it’s a skin or item you actually want to use, great! Otherwise it’s basically more vendor trash.

This is particular pernicious in a game where most of the end game, high value items are skins; consider how little people in general value doing fractals, despite having unique account bound rewards (in the rings and weapon skins); with so much of the reward value locked up in non-transferable rewards, the dungeon loses its reward structure once you have them (or if you don’t value fractal weapon skins).

Wanze.8410:

The extra charge of gold for the recipe or horns clearly is intended as a gold sink. As i have no data of how much gold actually goes into the different sinks in game, i guess Anet seemed it reasonable to put one into the aquisition of those items.

I’m honestly not really sure what they’re doing with that. The ‘dangerous’ supply of money is the ‘dead’, low velocity money that builds up on accounts that have been playing a while; that’s the money that stops being sunk by TP fees, and what makes prices surge when new content is introduced as it suddenly becomes hot again to buy up whatever is new and relevant to the new update.

Putting a 5g, 10g fee on every little thing sinks a lot of money from the guy who logs in a few times a week, but doesn’t even make a dent in the big fortunes; it ends up being a sort of regressive tax on the new content. They could go through and bill everyone in the game 50g, for instance, and while that would totally wipe out a majority of the players in the game, the whales wouldn’t even blink.