Guild Wars 2

mucco.1867:

Just tossing my 2c on why Smith is griefing us all and denying us data.

Well to be fair he finally did answer the question, which is, to sum up, “There will be a blog post about it in the future, but can’t tell you when beacause it is Anet policy to never give a date there are lots of more important things to do before.”

But I can understand Zegai.8256… being completely ignored and given only off topic answers is not very nice…

Maybe he should just open a “general economics discussion” thread instead of making a question thread into one of those. I like the discussion with John but it shouldn’t be here as per forum rules.

John Smith.4610:

Nike.2631:

One way of presenting a wealth chart that would be fascinating to me is gold (or other broader account value assessment) vs. hours played.

Not so much an “average gold per hour” thing, but looking at wealth vs. account age to see if there are any distinct bends in the curve. For example, I just finished my master crafter title this week and expect my ability to make gold to go up noticably now that I’m not hording materials for conversion to crafting XP.

I could probably spend a month coming up with meaningful combinations of wealth and income. Your suggestion would be at the top of the list, and the immediate question that comes up is: Do players who spend more time in game have more wealth because they play more, or are they more efficient because they’re really good at the game or both.

Or, perhaps, wealth versus amount of goods bought and sold on the trading post?

Contrasted with this…

Wealth versus time spent attacking monsters, farming nodes, doing events, etc?
(which should be the best way to approximate wealth actually produced… as that’s how money and materials are generated.)

I’m sure that, by a simple analysis, John Smith already knows that the wealth lies with those that manipulate the trading post.

Minos.5168:

I’m sure that, by a simple analysis, John Smith already knows that the wealth lies with those that manipulate the trading post.

Why is this even an issue? In other MMOs this was also true but GW2 is the first game where people ever complained about people playing the market. I personally believe you’re just taking the real life crisis into a game. I personally do not see any problems with the economy. I’ve got 300 hours to my name, I’m totally casual and got almost 50g banked without gems. Any goal is attainable with time. Since it’s a game, I’m willing to take my time for my goals.

John Smith.4610:

I really wanted to get a new blog post out for the first quarter of the game’s release, but I haven’t had the time, and issues in the game have to come first. It’s on my list of things to publish though.

That’s interesting. Are you also a game developer doing content creation, or do you do economist work at ANet full-time?

If the latter, what kind of ongoing economic work is required to keep GW2 running, that’s keeping you busy?

Working on the TP and RMT is probably very time consuming.

marnick.4305:

Why is this even an issue? In other MMOs this was also true but GW2 is the first game where people ever complained about people playing the market.

In what other MMOs?

The most popular MMO in the West, WoW, keeps nearly all Best In Slot Epics and all Legendaries bound on acquire. You get them for playing the game, not the AH.

The second most popular MMO in the West, EVE Online, has full destruction/loot on death and pvp enables everywhere – so go ahead, play the market in Jita and buy an expensive ship before you know how to play the game itself – see what happens to your shiny.

So were you talking about Asian MMOs nobody cares about? Or perhaps MMOs nobody plays anymore?

The fact is GW2 is the only significant western MMO that allows for 1) buying the most prestigious items without being good at the game while also offering 2) full protection against losing these items because you don’t know how to play the game.

That’s why people complain. They were promised an epic fantasy MMO. They got Monopoly instead.

Lol, citing WoW is horrible. All that game did was dumb down the genre for people. It’s pretty much the Britney Spears of the MMO world…

Plenty of mmos have AH or systems that allow people to buy and resell goods.

And the people who are complaining are the ones who do not want to play the game. Guess what TP brokers do for me? When I farm help me make more coins than I normally would.

Astralporing.1957:

John Smith.4610:

the immediate question that comes up is: Do players who spend more time in game have more wealth because they play more, or are they more efficient because they’re really good at the game or both.

I’d say neither. The people that have more wealth are those that spend more time on a few, very specific activities (namely: farming and TP playing). If you do anything else, you accumulate wealth very slowly, if any. If you are good at the game, it also doesn’t make you any more efficient, since neither of wealth-gaining activities require any skill whatsoever (well, any skill at the game. TP playing does require some ability, but it is an ability completely unconnected to the game).

I think it may even be fair to eliminate farming and say active TP players have by far the most wealth. The amount of gold earned by farming or playing the game seems very linear with a blip or two thrown in due to RNG on something like a precursor. The amount of gold earned off the TP can be exponential. There are probably a substantial amount of players with 1000G+ who have never finished the final mission, got 100% world completion, or gasp hit level 80…

John Smith.4610:

mucco.1867:

Just tossing my 2c on why Smith is griefing us all and denying us data.

He has very explicitly avoided the question on purpose, and has made a point of it. It is clear he is trying to convey that he can not, or does not want to, disclose any information. But, I am sure he is physically able to disclose some information – heck, I’m pretty sure he has like 10 charts of wealth distribution glued on all sides of his screen at work. So he does not want to, or someone forbids him to.

I can very well see the reason: for one person on the forums that can actually gain insight from the charts and be reasonable, there are twenty hate monkeys who will jump on the newly acquired data to “prove” that Anet fails @economy, is an evil corporation trying to pass subliminal messages about buying gems, is behind Guantanamo Bay and the Cold War, etc. Sometimes it’s better to leave those people without tools – I certainly would handle stuff this way if I were at Anet. I think John Smith is trying to tell us this with his behavior.

Presenting data for release is a more serious undertaking than you realize. Think of how many languages it has to be presented in, and the graphics have to be universally understandable, and for my purposes that means custom design, timing, approval. I’ve said I haven’t had time to prepare the information for a blog, though I would like to.

Seriously, enough with the conspiracies, I’m not saying anything, except exactly what I’m saying.

Now that you’re on your lunchbreak, question!

Is there anything surprising (economically) that has caught you off guard in regards to the game? Perhaps price manipulation?

John Smith.4610:

Vol.5241:

Now that you’re on your lunchbreak, question!

Is there anything surprising (economically) that has caught you off guard in regards to the game? Perhaps price manipulation?

When I released the blog post about pulling some of the surplus items like butter and soft wood logs out of the market with the Mystic Chest. How fast that took effect and burned those items really surprised me. 7 Million Items in 2 hours, never seen anything like it. It was really cool.

That’s funny you mention that – I always point to that temporary recipe as a reason to hoard lots of ‘rare’ quality items that seemingly have little use and have huge supply – something like Piles of Putrid Essence. I keep speculating that you guys will release a recipe in the near future once again to adjust supply for select items.

Of course, I don’t expect you to comment on the chances of that happening again, but in the meantime I’m hoarding 40g worth of piles. It’s quite possibly the safest investment in the game right now since the selling price is near vendor price.

As someone who adored that instance of the economy being rebalanced, (I could finally sell Iron Ore to other players w/o losing money!) I keep hoping you guys will do stuff like that again. It’s a personal thing, but I hate selling crafting supplies to vendors because I’d be selling at a loss on the TP, when I know that people could be using the mats that I’m essentially destroying. Are there any plans to do more limited-time mystic forge recipes like that again, or was that a one-off experiment?

John Smith.4610:

aramina.2591:

As someone who adored that instance of the economy being rebalanced, (I could finally sell Iron Ore to other players w/o losing money!) I keep hoping you guys will do stuff like that again. It’s a personal thing, but I hate selling crafting supplies to vendors because I’d be selling at a loss on the TP, when I know that people could be using the mats that I’m essentially destroying. Are there any plans to do more limited-time mystic forge recipes like that again, or was that a one-off experiment?

Never say never

You’re going to hike prices in common mats! :/

BUY BUY BUY BUY

JK Arrow.7102:

I think it may even be fair to eliminate farming and say active TP players have by far the most wealth. The amount of gold earned by farming or playing the game seems very linear with a blip or two thrown in due to RNG on something like a precursor. The amount of gold earned off the TP can be exponential. There are probably a substantial amount of players with 1000G+ who have never finished the final mission, got 100% world completion, or gasp hit level 80…

1) Plenty of people who do not like the story.
2) No reason reason for 100% unless you want to make a legendary. The other benefits for 100% are irrelevant if they are as rich as you claim.
3) ANet’s fault for not giving exp for trading.

Some people play the game only for
… sPvP
… open world PvE
… dungeons
… WvW

Why not ‘only for trading’?

John Smith.4610:

When I released the blog post about pulling some of the surplus items like butter and soft wood logs out of the market with the Mystic Chest. How fast that took effect and burned those items really surprised me. 7 Million Items in 2 hours, never seen anything like it. It was really cool.

Speaking of butter, I recently maxed out cooking on an alt and was really surprised by the price. The supply has definitely decreased with the price being as high as it is now. Are we nearing a point of too little for such a core crafting material? Or is this where we would like things?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/12138

John Smith.4610:

I can’t answer questions about my specific feelings about individual item prices here.

Can you say how happy you are with the functionality and presentation of the TP (in game) – either in general or in regards to certain aspects perhaps?

Is this looked at as well when analysing issues like “there is too much of item XYZ”?

Boy this turned into an AMAA pretty quick.

Khisanth.2948:

JK Arrow.7102:

I think it may even be fair to eliminate farming and say active TP players have by far the most wealth. The amount of gold earned by farming or playing the game seems very linear with a blip or two thrown in due to RNG on something like a precursor. The amount of gold earned off the TP can be exponential. There are probably a substantial amount of players with 1000G+ who have never finished the final mission, got 100% world completion, or gasp hit level 80…

1) Plenty of people who do not like the story.
2) No reason reason for 100% unless you want to make a legendary. The other benefits for 100% are irrelevant if they are as rich as you claim.
3) ANet’s fault for not giving exp for trading.

Some people play the game only for
… sPvP
… open world PvE
… dungeons
… WvW

Why not ‘only for trading’?

Aren’t there trading/merchant/stock market focused games out there for those type of ppl? Just seems those would be better suited for that type of player w/o them pulling the strings on an economy that effects all the ppl in gw2 playing b/c its a fantasy mmorpg.

Imagine the flip side of that coin. Bunch of players going into a trading simulator and messing up all the trade routes b/c it’s more profitable than trading and/or they like messing with the other players.

Essence Snow.3194:

Khisanth.2948:

JK Arrow.7102:

I think it may even be fair to eliminate farming and say active TP players have by far the most wealth. The amount of gold earned by farming or playing the game seems very linear with a blip or two thrown in due to RNG on something like a precursor. The amount of gold earned off the TP can be exponential. There are probably a substantial amount of players with 1000G+ who have never finished the final mission, got 100% world completion, or gasp hit level 80…

1) Plenty of people who do not like the story.
2) No reason reason for 100% unless you want to make a legendary. The other benefits for 100% are irrelevant if they are as rich as you claim.
3) ANet’s fault for not giving exp for trading.

Some people play the game only for
… sPvP
… open world PvE
… dungeons
… WvW

Why not ‘only for trading’?

Aren’t there trading/merchant/stock market focused games out there for those type of ppl? Just seems those would be better suited for that type of player w/o them pulling the strings on an economy that effects all the ppl in gw2 playing b/c its a fantasy mmorpg.

Imagine the flip side of that coin. Bunch of players going into a trading simulator and messing up all the trade routes b/c it’s more profitable than trading and/or they like messing with the other players.

The market exists intentionally. It’s part of the game.

Did you play Guild Wars 1? Do you remember that the Underworld and Fissure of Woe were only open when your region held the Hall of Heroes? (“Favor of the Gods”) The two had almost nothing to do with each other yet they were connected.

Part of creating a more lifelike world is creating as many interconnected and interdependent systems as possible – just like the real world.

Maybe instead of suggesting that some people go play a market simulation game, they would suggest you go play a single player RPG with static pricing?

You can acquire Exotic gear without using the TP or crafting station, but the fancy stuff requires rare material and it’s rare for a reason. The Trading Post is an arena where players compete for the best resources and items to differentiate themselves from others. You can go find the stuff yourself, or you can buy what you want from other players – but you don’t get to determine their selling price – each player gets to determine what property they will sell and how much they will sell it for.

It’s a very abstracted form of PvP. There are multiple objectives (you get to choose your own) multiple strategies and you get to determine the conditions for victory – whether it’s a legendary weapon or just a nice shade of red dye.

Those items you want but can’t afford? Someone else wants them too and they want them more than you do – and they also found a way to get them.

If you don’t like that meta, you don’t have to play.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Essence Snow.3194:

Khisanth.2948:

JK Arrow.7102:

I think it may even be fair to eliminate farming and say active TP players have by far the most wealth. The amount of gold earned by farming or playing the game seems very linear with a blip or two thrown in due to RNG on something like a precursor. The amount of gold earned off the TP can be exponential. There are probably a substantial amount of players with 1000G+ who have never finished the final mission, got 100% world completion, or gasp hit level 80…

1) Plenty of people who do not like the story.
2) No reason reason for 100% unless you want to make a legendary. The other benefits for 100% are irrelevant if they are as rich as you claim.
3) ANet’s fault for not giving exp for trading.

Some people play the game only for
… sPvP
… open world PvE
… dungeons
… WvW

Why not ‘only for trading’?

Aren’t there trading/merchant/stock market focused games out there for those type of ppl? Just seems those would be better suited for that type of player w/o them pulling the strings on an economy that effects all the ppl in gw2 playing b/c its a fantasy mmorpg.

Imagine the flip side of that coin. Bunch of players going into a trading simulator and messing up all the trade routes b/c it’s more profitable than trading and/or they like messing with the other players.

The market exists intentionally. It’s part of the game.

Did you play Guild Wars 1? Do you remember that the Underworld and Fissure of Woe were only open when your region held the Hall of Heroes? (“Favor of the Gods”) The two had almost nothing to do with each other yet they were connected.

Part of creating a more lifelike world is creating as many interconnected and interdependent systems as possible – just like the real world.

Maybe instead of suggesting that some people go play a market simulation game, they would suggest you go play a single player RPG with static pricing?

You can acquire Exotic gear without using the TP or crafting station, but the fancy stuff requires rare material and it’s rare for a reason. The Trading Post is an arena where players compete for the best resources and items to differentiate themselves from others. You can go find the stuff yourself, or you can buy what you want from other players – but you don’t get to determine their selling price – each player gets to determine what property they will sell and how much they will sell it for.

It’s a very abstracted form of PvP. There are multiple objectives (you get to choose your own) multiple strategies and you get to determine the conditions for victory – whether it’s a legendary weapon or just a nice shade of red dye.

Those items you want but can’t afford? Someone else wants them too and they want them more than you do – and they also found a way to get them.

If you don’t like that meta, you don’t have to play.

Yes, I played and remember that they separated UW and FoW from HA in favor of achievements. There is a reason why they have mostly separated pvp and pve in gw2.

The ig economy does not have the regulation that the rl economy has. Thus some the things that we are protected from in rl are only rewarded ig. It would make sense if one were trying to mimic rl in a game…they would take out/restrict the things that are bad in rl b/c games are supposed to be fun I thought.

If one were to have enough resource they could (and they do) determine what price things go for given they are of limited supply.

All that aside my main issue is that all of the long goals (shinys) are obtainable via playing the tp in a completely unbalanced ratio to actually playing the content. That coupled with the corrupt side of the market, effects all those in pve negatively.

ex) Jane spent 5 months working on farming and crafting a legendary weapon while Bob spent 1 week profiting off the tp (may or may not partook in manipulation) and bought one.

The ability for Bob to buy Jane’s “achievement” probably lessens the prestige she and others perceive. At the same time of lowering the prestige of that achievement for Jane, Bob, may or may not, have made it harder for Jane to obtain said achievement. Thus “knocking her to the floor and kicking her for good measure” essentially negatively effecting Jane’s time playing the game.

It is of my opinion that no one should be able to negatively impact someone else’s time playing the game…at least in PvE.

@EssenceSnow: While your point has some validity, I feel that blaming the trading post for this is a bit misguided.

In any game that allows players to trade items (whether face-to-face or indirectly via some kind of auction system), you will find people who making profits from buying and reselling items. The existence of a global TP may make this process more efficient for these people, but the process is driven by human nature not by the game system.

It can be argued that the global TP brings many benefits for the average player who doesn’t care about accumulating wealth through trading, not least of which is easy availability of market price information for items they want to buy or sell. Another benefit is the scale of the market increases the amount of competition for both buyers and sellers (meaning item values quickly adjust to appropriate levels despite attempts at market manipulation) and makes it easier to find people to buy your goods or who are selling items you want.

Do these benefits outweigh the “negatives” of easier wealth accumulation for traders? I may be biased, but I think they do for the great majority of items being traded on the market. Items with limited supply such as precursors/legendaries are a bit of an outlier from how the rest of the system works in my view, but they are also a highly visible aspect of the market that everyone seems to focus on.

Astraea.6075:

In any game that allows players to trade items (whether face-to-face or indirectly via some kind of auction system), you will find people who making profits from buying and reselling items. The existence of a global TP may make this process more efficient for these people, but the process is driven by human nature not by the game system.

As much as I’m not the biggest fan of the TP at the moment, I have to agree with this statement. It was actually just as easy (if not easier) to make money this way in GW1 than it is now. I used to buy Celestial Dragons for 30-40k and resell them for 60-80k daily with very little effort (maybe 10-15 minutes a day). Other things like tonics could be done the same with, but not quite as easily as some of the high end minis.

So yeah, the same thing existed in GW1, it just wasn’t packaged the same way.

Ensign.2189:

Essentially, the reward structure has people getting their exotic gear at 2-4 gold per piece, and after that it’s a long, long grind to several hundred gold before achieving the next tier. The game wants more variance in drops, and it really needs more goals between basic exotics and 1000 gold legendaries that most players will never touch.

I’m pretty sure that was the entire point of adding the Ascended tier. They saw people capping out in exotics within 2 weeks, paying 3g a piece, and then looking at a ~6 months to 1 year farmfests to make a 1000g legendary, with no rewards in the interim. They weren’t happy.

Enter Ascended, which seems to be targeted at taking several weeks to perfectly infuse a single piece. Granted, we only have 3 slots so far, but full armor sets and weapons will be forthcoming. I would guess that these will also have “middling” time/money investments – they won’t take thousands of gold to make, but the average player will need to invest a significant amount of time and gold to create one.

Ideally, Ascended gear will keep people playing, keep them farming and using gold/materials to craft high-end items. These items should take some dedication (or, in place of dedication, $$$ on the gem store), but won’t be the 1000g grindforever-or-have-the-luck-of-the-gods items that Legendaries are.

John Smith.4610:

Presenting data for release is a more serious undertaking than you realize. Think of how many languages it has to be presented in, and the graphics have to be universally understandable, and for my purposes that means custom design, timing, approval. I’ve said I haven’t had time to prepare the information for a blog, though I would like to.

But, mathematics IS the universal language.

Back to the topic…

In your opinion John, do you think that the Random Number Generator (RNG) is an important and currently functioning aspect for balancing wealth, inflation, and economy?

Astraea.6075:

@EssenceSnow: While your point has some validity, I feel that blaming the trading post for this is a bit misguided.

In any game that allows players to trade items (whether face-to-face or indirectly via some kind of auction system), you will find people who making profits from buying and reselling items. The existence of a global TP may make this process more efficient for these people, but the process is driven by human nature not by the game system.

It can be argued that the global TP brings many benefits for the average player who doesn’t care about accumulating wealth through trading, not least of which is easy availability of market price information for items they want to buy or sell. Another benefit is the scale of the market increases the amount of competition for both buyers and sellers (meaning item values quickly adjust to appropriate levels despite attempts at market manipulation) and makes it easier to find people to buy your goods or who are selling items you want.

Do these benefits outweigh the “negatives” of easier wealth accumulation for traders? I may be biased, but I think they do for the great majority of items being traded on the market. Items with limited supply such as precursors/legendaries are a bit of an outlier from how the rest of the system works in my view, but they are also a highly visible aspect of the market that everyone seems to focus on.

Wow, human nature, really… I never knew. Urge to buy and resell rising! Guess I missed the memo that everyone is a greedy kitten or did I sleep over the indoctrination classes that said money>anything else. Who knows.

As for benefits, yeah sure. You’re (all flippers/power traders combined) benefiting exactly less than 0 (omg, it’s negative). Tax, posting fee, your profit = how much less money other players have, it’s pretty simple. You’re not creating, just distributing from others to yourself (in nature such organisms are known as parasites I believe).

Novalight.7568:

Wow, human nature, really… I never knew. Urge to buy and resell rising! Guess I missed the memo that everyone is a greedy kitten or did I sleep over the indoctrination classes that said money>anything else. Who knows.

As for benefits, yeah sure. You’re (all flippers/power traders combined) benefiting exactly less than 0 (omg, it’s negative). Tax, posting fee, your profit = how much less money other players have, it’s pretty simple. You’re not creating, just distributing from others to yourself (in nature such organisms are known as parasites I believe).

I wouldn’t call them parasites. That’s just commie propaganda. Everyone does what he can to make money, and whatever way you turn it, everyone will use his skillsets to maximize his gains. That does not necessarily mean playing the TP. Some people have a tendency to farm and will keep farming. Others like dungeons and run as many as they can to maximize gains. Some even may ..gasp.. work in real life and convert the profits into gems. And yes, you have people who play the market. That’s completely legit. I wouldn’t call someone a parasite because he found a way to maximize his income.

There’s also a group that doesn’t care so much about gains and more about fun. Stupid hippies. They just want low prices, equal distribution of money and blame others for their own lack of incentives at getting the stuff they want. If others don’t agree… they’re parasites…. That’s pretty insulting actually but also human nature. If you can’t make money, you steal from the rich. For some reason that’s an acceptable point of view for most people.

Not that I personally play the TP.. I play like a hippie and supplement my lack of gold income with gems I get from real life. I won’t complain about people smarter than me playing the market. That’s the difference between you and me.

As far as creating value goes … TP players invest time. EG they clear buy orders and set sell orders. Due to this, both seller and buyer get their gold faster due to the investment of the TP player. The TP player invests the time normally required by both other players. TP players also buy low value items, upgrade them to high value items, as such they create a supply for high demand items and demand for high supply items. That’s good for casual players.
In the end, all they do is balance out the market. Every single flip lowers margins for that particular flip. The TP would actually be more imbalanced without TP players. As time goes on, it becomes ever less likely for casual players to make dumb sales on the TP because all margins will be zero. As a casual player, I welcome that, and yes, they are allowed to earn money for their time…

marnick.4305:

I won’t complain about people smarter than me playing the market. That’s the difference between you and me.

As far as creating value goes … TP players invest time. EG they clear buy orders and set sell orders. Due to this, both seller and buyer get their gold faster due to the investment of the TP player. The TP player invests the time normally required by both other players. TP players also buy low value items, upgrade them to high value items, as such they create a supply for high demand items and demand for high supply items. That’s good for casual players.
In the end, all they do is balance out the market. Every single flip lowers margins for that particular flip. The TP would actually be more imbalanced without TP players. As time goes on, it becomes ever less likely for casual players to make dumb sales on the TP because all margins will be zero. As a casual player, I welcome that, and yes, they are allowed to earn money for their time…

I agree with that. Everybody has the option to do that, and if it was so easy to gain money by doing it, obviously everybody would do it instead of grinding. If somebody is willing to do the math and constantly monitor the TP, good for him.

Zaxares.5419:

penatbater.4710:

I honestly wanna see the wealth distribution of the players.

I’m deeply curious to know this too!

I don’t think you would want to. GM makes about 500g in a few days without much effort. I’d be scared to see what he could make if he really played the market. Fact is the majority of people are lazy and want money quick and easy. So instead of applying themselves a little bit they just cry about how there is a small group of players who control the majority of gold out there.

On a side note I’m working on my legendary (Only need 100 pieces of 3 separate t6 mats to be done in case anyone was wondering) and needed about 100g more and asked him what I should do. Using items in my bank and spending about 45g I made 140g after fees. So again it’s not hard to make money, just many people are too lazy to apply themselves.

Essence Snow.3194:

The ability for Bob to buy Jane’s “achievement” probably lessens the prestige she and others perceive. At the same time of lowering the prestige of that achievement for Jane, Bob, may or may not, have made it harder for Jane to obtain said achievement. Thus “knocking her to the floor and kicking her for good measure” essentially negatively effecting Jane’s time playing the game.

It is of my opinion that no one should be able to negatively impact someone else’s time playing the game…at least in PvE.

That is the most god awful reasoning ever.

Look, if you or other people cannot feel an accomplishment on your actions because someone did it differently I wonder how you would act in the real world….

My first car cost about the same as some people make in a few minutes of daytrading…. Did I look at them and felt like my car was no big deal?

People should have the freedom to spend the time they have how they want. If people like making money on the TP it does not harm Jane. It may have helped her if she bought her mats instead of farmed them all. If Jane does not feel accomplished for grinding out her legendary, that is on her and no one else.

Tup.1803:

So again it’s not hard to make money, just many people are too lazy to apply themselves.

I’m getting so sick of people saying this. Look, ANY skill is not easy for everyone. If it was, we’d all be billionaire, concert pianist, oscar-winning actors who designed the latest and greatest piece of technology and cured cancer…. [/sarcasm] Human beings all have their strengths and weaknesses. Not all people can play the economic game, just as not all people will be good at sPvP. Not all people want to. I have zero interest in playing the TP nor am I really able to. I can’t compete against the people who have that interest and the knowhow to do so.

I don’t begrudge people making hundreds or thousands of gold off the TP. Good for them and I’m glad they have fun. I just don’t like making exorbitant amounts of money a requirement to get anything shiny in this game. I want to earn it through game play. That’s why I went after dungeon gear. I enjoyed working for those rewards.

There should be different (and reasonable!) avenues to suit different playstyles.

Lothirieth.3408:

I don’t begrudge people making hundreds or thousands of gold off the TP. Good for them and I’m glad they have fun. I just don’t like making exorbitant amounts of money a requirement to get anything shiny in this game. I want to earn it through game play. That’s why I went after dungeon gear. I enjoyed working for those rewards.

There should be different (and reasonable!) avenues to suit different playstyles.

You should realize that money and time are actually the same commodity. Doing three exp paths in any dungeon gives you 180 tokens, which equals a piece of exotic gear. Considering a fast dungeon you could do so in less than an hour. Would you agree?

Ok.

As per GW2Spidy, the cheapest lv80 exotic armorpiece are Galrath’s Gauntlets at 1.24g. This item does not have a rune. So in 1 hour you made the equivalent of 1.24g on top of any drops + the free rune in dungeon armor. That’s not bad actually. Penny saved penny earned.

Exactly. I prefer to spend my time doing activities. And it’s precisely why I went after dungeon armour. I also made some coin whilst not paying for my exotics. But this is the only way I make money in the game: run dungeons (use tokens to buy armour to use or rares to salvage), gather mats, and sell anything I can. I can manage a few gold per day, but it’s still gonna take me ages to save up enough money for legendary items and fight against inflation as there are those than make lots more gold a day. Though if I didn’t want a shiny skin, I’d be completely set and have no need of the money I’d made. But that’s sort of the point of this game: shiny skins and working towards a look. I just want to play the game to get them, not the TP… yet keep everything buyable for those that do like to play the TP.

John Smith.4610:

I can’t answer questions about my specific feelings about individual item prices here.

How about the economy in general?

I’m a scientist. I deal with lots of data – I make a lot graphs or other representations to gain insight – most of which will never be published, and in general, are too crude or otherwise misleading to all but a few colleagues. So, I can understand your general reluctance. But it’d almost be better for you not to be posting than to leave such cryptic and otherwise unuseful posts.

I assume you’ve been doing some of what I describe I do. You must have some ideas about how the economy is going. Can’t you even say, give a list of your top concerns about what needs addressing? It doesn’t have to be super specific, but at least not super generalized (I am concerned with certain unnamed items prices values).

Joiry.2504:

John Smith.4610:

I can’t answer questions about my specific feelings about individual item prices here.

How about the economy in general?

I’m a scientist. I deal with lots of data – I make a lot graphs or other representations to gain insight – most of which will never be published, and in general, are too crude or otherwise misleading to all but a few colleagues. So, I can understand your general reluctance. But it’d almost be better for you not to be posting than to leave such cryptic and otherwise unuseful posts.

I assume you’ve been doing some of what I describe I do. You must have some ideas about how the economy is going. Can’t you even say, give a list of your top concerns about what needs addressing? It doesn’t have to be super specific, but at least not super generalized (I am concerned with certain unnamed items prices values).

He has to speak in generalizations. If he were to say, “I’m concerned about the price of Silver Doubloons”, then he would be impacting the market for that commodity.

When you release statistics, can we have statistics about the total amount of copper/silver/gold removed by listing and selling tax (seperated)? Would be interesting to know how good the trading post works as a gold sink.

John Smith.4610:

5. RMT: I’ve made my feelings about RMT pretty clear before. One day I hope I’ll be able to release numbers on how much money is wasted and how many people’s lives are damaged by RMT to give people some perspective on who they’re supporting.

How about botting? Or will you lump that in with the RMT classification.

I think of RMT as having real damage to the real economy (specifically the financials of Arenanet as well as victims of credit card fraud)

While botting has a real significant damage to the virtual economy.

Vol.5241:

John Smith.4610:

5. RMT: I’ve made my feelings about RMT pretty clear before. One day I hope I’ll be able to release numbers on how much money is wasted and how many people’s lives are damaged by RMT to give people some perspective on who they’re supporting.

How about botting? Or will you lump that in with the RMT classification.

I think of RMT as having real damage to the real economy (specifically the financials of Arenanet as well as victims of credit card fraud)

While botting has a real significant damage to the virtual economy.

Botting inflicts real damage to the real economy as well.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Vol.5241:

John Smith.4610:

5. RMT: I’ve made my feelings about RMT pretty clear before. One day I hope I’ll be able to release numbers on how much money is wasted and how many people’s lives are damaged by RMT to give people some perspective on who they’re supporting.

How about botting? Or will you lump that in with the RMT classification.

I think of RMT as having real damage to the real economy (specifically the financials of Arenanet as well as victims of credit card fraud)

While botting has a real significant damage to the virtual economy.

Botting inflicts real damage to the real economy as well.

Well yeah I guess you can make the indirect relationship

Botting → funds gold selling → fewer $ for Arenanet.

John Smith.4610:

aramina.2591:

As someone who adored that instance of the economy being rebalanced, (I could finally sell Iron Ore to other players w/o losing money!) I keep hoping you guys will do stuff like that again. It’s a personal thing, but I hate selling crafting supplies to vendors because I’d be selling at a loss on the TP, when I know that people could be using the mats that I’m essentially destroying. Are there any plans to do more limited-time mystic forge recipes like that again, or was that a one-off experiment?

Never say never

You’ve said never twice in that sentence. Does that quote lead into a paradox?

Well, I don’t really worry about the game economy either. Afterall, its not really an economy, rather more a hunter/gatherer society living in a near garden of eden. Fruit (eg mobs, nodes) blossoms eternally, no one will starve or lack for shelter, there’s no infrastructure to maintain, no R&D, etc, etc.

John Smith.4610:

2. Profit and Loss: There is nothing in our game that doesn’t consistently have places where good profit margins exist, including crafting.

3. Drops and Loot: People mistake the sell and buy orders of drops as static, but don’t see the velocity of those items. It often seems like there aren’t new items, when the supply might cycle 4-5 times in a day.

2 – I don’t doubt there’s a few crafting recipes than can make a bit of profit. But do these actually exist across all crafting disciplines? (no, I don’t need to know the specific ones or recipes) And are they really profit makers? There are some crafted weapons and armors that players are trying to sell at what appears to be a profit over the cost of materials…but the looted versions undercut them all the time. And is it really healthy that nearly all the recipes are basically worthless, other than to level with?

3 – lack of market information is one of my biggest beefs, I believe I even mentioned it in an earlier post in this thread. To the (probably small) extent market manipulation exists, it exists due to a lack of information. I don’t want to see the current buy/sell orders – which really put an artificial constraint on trade in ways. I want to see the last X actual purchases. Or for very high volume goods, say the 1, 4, and 8 day averages (maybe not quite those intervals), maybe even some useful stats like median and mode.

Anyway, most of it probably doesn’t matter that much. Most players I don’t think care enough, just want a place to sell and buy. However, those that do, well, probably the next MMO to offer a better (er, more interesting) economic experience than a mainly loot based economy won’t stick around. There’s a t least one upcoming direct competitor to GW2 that seems like it will have a more sandboxy economy if it stays true to its franchises roots (which, of course, is not guaranteed).

TBH, I am quite impressed with the economy in the game. It’s diverse, interconnected, and has many things that single players (even poor players) can influence.

I’ve even had fun playing with the market. Not playing the market – playing with the market. Bump the price of something up by a few thousand percent, and the market reacts in hours and you have more than 10fold supply within a day (this had cost me about 50s to action – buying all available supply for something and listing one for a gold). Double the price for a mat and the volume of sales to diectly to (my) buy offers more than triples.

It’s been fun & educational, and I hope to see it continue much as it is now, in the years to come.

//Yamagawa
(Though, a total gold sales figure would be nice to have for bragging rights…)

Joiry.2504:

2 – I don’t doubt there’s a few crafting recipes than can make a bit of profit. But do these actually exist across all crafting disciplines? (no, I don’t need to know the specific ones or recipes) And are they really profit makers? There are some crafted weapons and armors that players are trying to sell at what appears to be a profit over the cost of materials…but the looted versions undercut them all the time. And is it really healthy that nearly all the recipes are basically worthless, other than to level with?

Yes, all disciplines have profitable recipes.
Yes, they are profit makers. Yes, they really do sell despite others available on the market. (I make ~10g/day and jump disciplines at intervals, allowing backlogs I created to sell)

And eh…. Last I looked it was like levels 125-300 for the worst offender had nothing profitable – but its been getting better with time – I expect much if the surplus was created when people were discovering how the initial crafting system worked, and then a few specific surplus items were created when people used them to (unprofitably) level their crafting. Give it some time, and keep eyes open for the mats people still dump on the market after crafting them for levels.
//Yamagawa
– Crafting VVizzard (self proclaimed)

Hello John Smith, been following this forum for a while. As you might have seen, one of my threads are about a specific lodestone, namely, Charged lodestone(s).

It’s in high demand, I know that, but… the way to get it is by only having either luck in CoE or luck in only 3 farm able areas in the game (Orr has all 3 of them).

I think Anet knows when Anet removed bots and introduced DR on farm, It hurt the prices of many t6 items, sky-rocketing them way up. A example is the Charged lodestone, at the beginning, (before November) , it was normally at lowest 30s and at highest 60s to 80s. After November it has only increased, with today’s price steadily staying at 4g for ONE charged lodestone.

It costs over one thousand gold to buy 250 of them, 400+ to buy 100 or 700ish for 200.
What buggers me is the fact that they are obviously for unique exotics, but these unique exotics almost (closely) come up at the same prices as a big chunk of the buy able materials for legendaries.
It basictly bothers me that unique exotics whom have no stat superiority to a normal exotic but still manages to cost a really really big chunk of money or even time.
I can perfectly understand and I find it reasonable, that legendaries should take a long time and should require some very big investments.
But unique exotics which are nothing but a really cool looking skin for you, should take so long and be so hard to get.
I’ve tried to farm the sparks for the Charged lodestones, with 120% magic find, I did it for three hours (re took the temple twice, and I took pauses to get rid of the anti-bot thing), and I didn’t see a single lodestone drop.

I think your Magic find isn’t working, or maybe it is working as you intended, but not as the players wanted it to behave, from my own experience and many others, it increases the chance of white trash items, blues and some greens to drop.

Also, what are your thoughts on the prices on the TP for the lodestones? Have you at Anet ever thought of implementing alot more ways to maybe get these lodestones, or maybe increasing the drop rate?

As for me in guild wars 2, I have become unmotivated to try to play, the dungeons feel repetitive, my guild doesn’t even talk that much, compared to WoW, everyone were happy to banter each other or chat in guild chat, and my guild has over 40+ members online every time I log on, my friends on friend list don’t say what’s up in a whisper when I login or anything the like, again, unlike WoW, some of them would say sup, wana come heroic blabla Dungeon? In a way guild wars 2 has made alot of people egotistical in their playstyle, but that might just be the way my own server rolls, everyone on my server might be self centred people and they don’t bother to chat in /map with some random troll, which from my own experience is fun to pass the time with when you are bored in Lions Arch.
My only true GEAR goal in guild wars 2 was and Is to get the unique exotic 1handed sword Infinite light, it looks super awesome, cooler than Bolt (bolt is just fat and flashy, it’s too much for me) , but the very limited ways to get the materials for it…..that part sucks! I am willing to work for it! but I will only work for it if I am certain that I will reach my goal within in what I perceive for a reasonable time to have a cool sword ( 2 or 3 months for a unique skin) .
I don’t really do power trading through the trading post (because I feel like a scumbag when I take the advantage of the clueless people in order to make some heavy profits), I am currently up to 37g, but I want to spend that gold on the Cultural t3 for nord right now because atleast I know that I will get that and I will get that in a reasonable span of time. 4 gold for one Lodestone…and I need 250 of them! My spaghetti god! that is ridiculous. And considering how often I get a charged lodestone, well, I have never gotten one, Ever, it has never dropt for me….

Please, I just want to know if you and maybe your fellow team(s) are looking into this! Have you any plans to change the materials required for unique exotics like infinite light, or any plans to increase the drop rates or any plans to mayby just mayb ( I realy hope you will!) to increase the areas where specificly lodestones are drop able and SHOULD at the very least give a player like me, 1 lodestone a week (aproximly over 10 hours of farming).

A long reply, I know, and excuse me for my not so perfect english, it is not my main language (not my secondary either).

Novalight.7568:

Wow, human nature, really… I never knew. Urge to buy and resell rising! Guess I missed the memo that everyone is a greedy kitten or did I sleep over the indoctrination classes that said money>anything else. Who knows.

As for benefits, yeah sure. You’re (all flippers/power traders combined) benefiting exactly less than 0 (omg, it’s negative). Tax, posting fee, your profit = how much less money other players have, it’s pretty simple. You’re not creating, just distributing from others to yourself (in nature such organisms are known as parasites I believe).

I never said it was part of everyone’s nature to do this, but in any economy (real or virtual) you will find that people engage in this sort of activity. It’s not about greed either, people may do this for any number of reasons in the real world (i.e. store owners may do this to earn a living, or it could be that they have an interest in the goods they sell).

As for benefits, I was talking about the benefits of a global TP system, not power traders, flippers, manipulators, or parasites (pick whichever term you prefer). The system means that if I pick up a rune I don’t want to use, I can look and see how much it is currently valued at by the “market”. I can then make my pricing decisions based on this information and when I list it, I know that my item is available to be seen by the entire player base of the game.

Compare this to GW1, unless I took an active interest in what runes people wanted, I would have very little idea how much I could possibly sell it for. To sell it, I’d have to take time out from the game and stand around spamming trade channel in a city till I found a buyer willing to pay the price I was asking (or who could offer me a price I felt was reasonable).

I hope this makes clear the sort of benefits I was talking about. I’ll try to refrain from derailing this thread any further, as I am enjoying the conversation that’s taking place here.

Dee Jay.2460:

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

And yet so called “experts” are known to give less reliable predictions than amateurs.

There’s a dynamic at play in economics which works against expert predictions in modern economies. Economics strives to reduce inefficiencies. When an economy is poorly developed, the inefficiencies are rather large and easy to identify. So it’s easy to predict what’s going to happen.

As the large inefficiencies are eliminated, the size of economic motions due to random chance becomes larger relative to the remaining inefficiencies. The effect of random chance itself doesn’t actually increase, but because the inefficiencies are growing smaller, the magnitude of random chance’s effect relative to market effects does. So the more developed (more efficient) an economy becomes, the harder it becomes to predict.

Unfortunately, some people mistakenly conflate this with “experts” not knowing what the economy is doing. That’s simply not true. They know a helluva lot more than some monkey blindly making stock picks. It’s just that our economy is so efficient that it only takes a few random events to make the monkey’s predictions better than the expert’s predictions.