(edited by FInN.7219)
Gem Prices are just insane now
Gem prices go up when people convert gold into gems. Gem prices go down when people use real money to purchase gems.
stop buying gems with gold if you think the prices are too high.
It’s a player’s market. Supply and Demand. That simple.
If no one sells their gems, then the price for them is going to go up. If tons of people sell their gems, then the price will go down.
People buying gems with real money, want their money’s worth. A gold here and there for their buck is not worth it. So they stop selling, causing the price to rise. When the price gets high enough, and they feel it is worth selling again, they will sell their gems.
Telling Anet to put a cap on it ruins the whole purpose of it being a player market.
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
Lady Bethany Of Noh – Chronomancer – Lords of Noh [LoN]
Lady Bethany Of Noh – Chronomancer – Lords of Noh [LoN]
(edited by SpyderArachnid.5619)
Is buying items with Gems the same as people buying Gems with real money as its putting those Gems back into the economy?
Gold is easier to get so what’s the issue?
Is buying items with Gems the same as people buying Gems with real money as its putting those Gems back into the economy?
When you buy items with gems, you are removing gems. It’s like spending gold on a salvage kit. That gold doesn’t go back into the economy, it gets removed. Same thing with gems. If you buy a costume with gems, they get removed, not tossed back into the economy.
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
Lady Bethany Of Noh – Chronomancer – Lords of Noh [LoN]
Lady Bethany Of Noh – Chronomancer – Lords of Noh [LoN]
which sucks because people are buying gold off the gold sellers and converting those into gems which screws legit players.
It just seems to me that that behind doors, Anet are trying to push micro-transactions on players to make up for not been subscription based.
This was never some big secret. This was always how the game was going to work. The gem market is a clever way of limiting how much players can get for free, and only exists to make sure someone will be willing to pay them money for ingame items.
You know what I find insane? I can’t sell gems for gold and make a decent profit. Keep on going up gem prices!
I don’t think people understand that this is a F2P game which means they have to make their money somehow. They do that by encouraging players to use real money to purchase things like gems, etc. It is usually much quicker and easier than farming the gold in game and, as they say “time is money” so not everyone in the process of leveling has the amount of in game gold to buy gems which are needed for extended bank storage, bag space, etc. If the game doesn’t make money from players somehow, then the game goes off line.
IMO we really really need the price for gems to keep going up higher and higher, so that ANet can hope to compete with the 3rd party gold sellers.
What about those of us who don’t have enough time to play and make gold but don’t wish to spend actual money on a video game?
Last weekend, gem prices were 100 gems for 40 silver. I spent a week of what little free time I had to get that 40 silver only to find that now its up to 60 silver for 100 gems.
If people want to spend their actual money on things then that’s their own choice but it shouldn’t be the only way to get gems.
If gem prices continue to rise, as some of you are saying they should, just so you can spend your money on gems to sell for gold then it really will start to become a pay to win game. That should be the last thing Arenanet wants.
Under no circumstances is rapid inflation beneficial to the economy.
which sucks because people are buying gold off the gold sellers and converting those into gems which screws legit players.
Can’t quote this hard enough.
As long as gold sellers illicitly supply gold cheaper than you can buy Gems from Anet, people are going to keep buying gold from 3rd parties and converting it into gems.
Seeing as you can get 10g for 5 bucks illicitly now and 10g will get you 1700 gems in game, Anet is charging QUADRUPLE for gems what you could pay if you went to a 3rd party from gold to convert into gems. (3rd party: $5 = 10g = 1700 gems, Anet: $10 = 800 gems).
The arbitrage is really, really strong here. I’m sure it being taken advantage of is more common than anyone would like to believe. When dealing with real money I’m willing to bet people seriously de-value the possibility of getting banned when they could get the same gems for 1/4th the price. You don’t have the be an economist to know that a margin of 75% is enough get even the most risk averse people to go illicit.
If you think 1g for 170 gems is bad now, just wait and see if the market values equalize. If the true price of 10g on the 3rd party market is $5 then you’re looking at an exchange rate of 1g = 42 gems before people start buying Gems through Anet’s store instead of arbitraging gold through a 3rd party. Have fun!
Also, there’s a 28% fee (at the moment) on converting gems to gold. This means that even if the above scenario happened, it would still cost you $7.50 to buy enough gems through Anets store purchase $5 worth of gold on the 3rd party market. Oops! At least people here would be WAY more likely to buy gems from Anet rather than gold from the 3rd parties. Conspiracy? You decide!
I should have ended this post two paragraphs ago, but I’m finding the ecnomic faults here kind of fascinating. The real problem right now is that Anet should have a monopoly on gold and gems, but they’ve been turned into monopolistic competition by their own players (well, BOTs). It would be really, REALLY interesting to see if Anet actually lowered the price of gems because they’re in direct competition with their own consumers as a way of combating 3rd parties. Right now the only thing going for them is virtue (wanting to support Anet, not wanting to get banned, convenience, etc.)
Based on this, though, here’s my Nostradamus predicition:
Holding the 3rd party situation constant ($5 = 10g, risk associated with buying 3rd party gold, etc). Gems are going to increase in price until they’re about 1/4th of what they are now, so around 1g for 40-50 gems. At this rate, Gems to gold will convert at a rate of around $6-$8 for 10g worth of gems. At this point, the risk of buying gold from third parties will be such that people will start deciding to just buy gems from Anet instead of gold from third parties. This price point may vary based on how risk-averse the community is, and could equalize higher (say, $10 for 10g worth of gems). At this point gold sellers might lower their price, but this model won’t include that because then we’d alter a fundamental assumption of the analysis. Neat to think about though. Give me a few months and I’ll fish this post out and see what’s become of the market.
Please don’t take any of this speculation as investment advice though. Anything could happen (For example, Anet could find a way to ban gold buyers with 100% certainty which would do crazy things to the market). Also considering that this will take time – months maybe even years if it DOES happen, the return isn’t very high comparable to the discount rate. Even if this analysis were to become true you would have to put a substantial amount of gold (100+) into gems before it became a good investment months from now. Even if I put 100g into gems now and this prediction came true, I could make more money farming than I could getting my investment back in 2-3 months.
(edited by Darmikau.9413)
Gold sellers will ALWAYS sell lower than ANet regardless of how cheap/expensive gems are. They use bots and/or hacked accounts to make all the gold they sell and when you buy from them there is a high chance you are going to lose your account which means our gold and cash are all gone. If ANet sold 100g for $1, gold sellers would sell it even cheaper because that is what they do. Doing Gems to Gold is the only 100% safe way to not have your account hacked.
Gem prices are based on supply/demand. The fewer people that buy them with real money, and sell them for gold, the fewer there are to be purchased in game. If gem prices are going up then that means there are less gems to be purchased.
If gem prices are going up then that means there are less gems to be purchased.
If gem prices are going up it means the factors that determine what compels people to buy gems are changing in one direction (with regards to price). There is no “supply” of gems in a technical sense – Anet can create infinite gems. They have a perfectly elastic supply (well, unless Anet decides to change how much gems cost). The increase in the price of gems is due to an increase in the quantity demanded of gems, not an increase in the demand for gems themselves.
(edited by Darmikau.9413)
gold sellers will 100% lower the prices. and they have already fallen compared to the beginning of almost 1g to 1$.
its not like they have a shortage of gold to sell. there are multiple gold sellers too so they can even drive themselves down.
i dont like the higher gem prices but there’s nothing i can do about it. at least there’s plenty of incentives for arena net to kick out the bots and gold sellers.
Gem prices are high atm because of Halloween approaching
either people are stocking up on gems for the new items being added to the shop on the Halloween patch or people are simply playing the market and have stocked up gems when they were cheap and are going to convert it back to gold for profit.
i’ve got 3100 gems saved up just for this.
Couple of undisputable facts about the gem store and gem prices.
- Nothing and absolutely nothing there is needed to enjoy the game.
- The price of gems (vs. gold) will keep going up. If you want to buy gems with gold, do it now.
If you absolutely need something from the gem store, stop being stingy and buy the gems with hard cash. In doing so you are also supporting the developer, allowing them to bring you more content to your favourite game.
One – Piken Square
You can thank gold sellers and players who buy from them for this, thanks a lot brain dead morons…
aleiro please back that statement up with some evidence of any kind. I’m curious if this is true. Have you found posts about people who bought gold from gold sellers and, in turn, bought gems with it?
I would think that the pricing of gems is natural due to the ever increasing amount of gold in the game system. Once someone has bought all of their exotic gear what is there to spend gold on?
The cost of waypoints and armour repair do not eat away at the gold that my level 80 character makes in the course of playing. Without trying, one can make ~1g per hour after expenses at level 80. If someone really tries they can make 5g per hour.
Most people will be making around 1g – 2g per hour.
What do they do with this gold?
Well, some will do what I’ve done which is to buy gems cause I have nothing else to spend the gold on. I don’t want a legendary weapon.
As an aside, a lot of people who bought their legendary weapon now have gold freed up to spend on other stuff as well. What is there for them to spend the gold on in the game for? Basically, nothing, so why not buy up gems before the Halloween event in the hopes that some cool stuff will show up?
Oh by the way, please keep buying a lot of gems with gold so the price of gems will keep skyrocketing. Soon I’ll just blow 20 EUR to gems and have my cultural tier 3 set :P
One – Piken Square
aleiro please back that statement up with some evidence of any kind. I’m curious if this is true. Have you found posts about people who bought gold from gold sellers and, in turn, bought gems with it?
I would think that the pricing of gems is natural due to the ever increasing amount of gold in the game system. Once someone has bought all of their exotic gear what is there to spend gold on?
The cost of waypoints and armour repair do not eat away at the gold that my level 80 character makes in the course of playing. Without trying, one can make ~1g per hour after expenses at level 80. If someone really tries they can make 5g per hour.
Most people will be making around 1g – 2g per hour.
What do they do with this gold?
Well, some will do what I’ve done which is to buy gems cause I have nothing else to spend the gold on. I don’t want a legendary weapon.
As an aside, a lot of people who bought their legendary weapon now have gold freed up to spend on other stuff as well. What is there for them to spend the gold on in the game for? Basically, nothing, so why not buy up gems before the Halloween event in the hopes that some cool stuff will show up?
Gold sellers have negatively impacted players when it comes to gold to gem conversion.
Either by producing more money in game constantly or by selling to players which then convert their bought gold to gems, the formula ANet is using is only making it harder on legitimate players.
Do you honestly think the people that buy gold have not realized they can get 3-4 times the amount of gems versus buying from ANet directly?
I have never bought game currency from gold farming sites, but constantly seeing how cheap they are offering gold and how many more gems I can get is really starting to tempt me. I’ve spent 150 dollars on gems so far on ANets site. That’s only 12000 gems.
With that same money I could have gotten 36000 to 48000 gems.
(edited by illgot.1056)
It doesn’t help that ANet’s payment acceptance system is buggy. Probably a lot of people trying to buy gems with real money, but can’t.
It was an absoute no-brainer that the gold-per-gem exchange rate had to increase. The derived exchange rate considering the €/$ to gems to gold scheme placed GW2-gold as the most valuable currency in the world. Last thing I heard, even 3rd party gold sellers valued 1 gold higher than 1€.
MrGorkajuice.8391, I can’t follow your logic. Probably because it doesn’t make any sense.
The exchange rate went up because more people get to higher levels and have better methods for earning gold. So the gold income of the average player increased. On the other hand real life income didn’t.
There’s also the fact that, since gems-to-gold is still not a good rate, most of the people who are buying gems aren’t doing so to get gold, but rather simply to get things in the gem store (extra slots, boosters, etc.) Their purchases therefore don’t have an impact on the gem/gold rates, because their gems aren’t really part of the supply available to buy with gold.
Either by producing more money in game constantly or by selling to players which then convert their bought gold to gems, the formula ANet is using is only making it harder on legitimate players.
Wouldn’t this increase the price of gems? Which, in turn, would make buying gems more attractive to players who want to not break the rules and support ArenaNet by getting them more gold for the gems they legitimately purchase?
Do you honestly think the people that buy gold have not realized they can get 3-4 times the amount of gems versus buying from ANet directly?
Since I never called that into question or even brought that up, no, I don’t think that at all. Not sure why you’d even think that I did.
I’m a long time MMO player, blah blah a lot of us are. Even from my early days of playing I have been a habitual 3rd party gold buyer (read everything I say before you freak out). I have never been banned in any MMO for buying gold even though I have purchased, throughout the years, several thousands of real dollars worth of currency (I’ve done my time, I’ve busted my kitten I’m a contributing member of society, I pay my taxes, provide for my family, and etc. so judge me however you will I really don’t care)
I can say this in all honesty though, since GW2’s original ban-a-palooza stance early on in the game I have literally been terrified to purchase gold. I did it with impunity for years but this is the first game which I haven’t. It’s tempting… Oh so tempting… I could drop a few hundo for several hundreds of gold easy, but I’m afraid to.
What’s worse is the fact that the gem shop in this game offers so little of value to me that I won’t even spend but a fraction of my spending capability there either. While it’s altogether possible that people are buying from 3rd pary sites to purchase gems and inflate the markets, I highly doubt there are as many as you think. I watch the third party sites as well and they’ve made substantial cuts rapidly in their $/gold prices. So we can either assume they aren’t getting enough buyers and they are trying to make gold buying more tempting, they’ve amassed substantial amounts of gold in a relatively short amount of time, or they are being targeted by Anet and trying to mass dump and pull some profit before they get shut down. It’s probably a combination of all three to be honest.
Anet needs to adjust the fee’s associated with gem to gold trading, they need to offer better content in their cash shop, the cash shop needs to be regularly updated… Seriously get with nexon and figure this stuff out anet. While I despise most of nexons games, I’d be ignorant to admit that they are not the kings of the cash shop and anet needs to take some serious notes if they plan to use this model to sustain their company.
(edited by Aero.4829)
The reason for the gold price change from $1 for 1g to $1 for 2g was simple. They removed DR on drops and the price of gold changed.
http://www.guildwarstrade.com/blackmarket
The HUGE problem with the gem prices is simple, 1 use of black lion kit currently costs a huge 7.6s per use. The gem store stuff is now overpriced.
Oh btw What do you guys think is going to happen during the upcoming event?
If the gem store costumes are any good everyone will convert gold to gems, will enough buy gems to cover it?
Gosh I should have invested into an education of economics in college instead of
Physics. I am very aprreciative that someone does understand it and and comprehends this complex issues and hopefully the housing market does not crash if and when it develops, that should cure the econnmic crisis until we can hear warren buffet to say otherwise.
MrGorkajuice.8391, I can’t follow your logic. Probably because it doesn’t make any sense.
The exchange rate went up because more people get to higher levels and have better methods for earning gold. So the gold income of the average player increased. On the other hand real life income didn’t.
My point exactly. While there’s not necessarily a well defined barrier that absolutely dictates that the value of one in-game currency unit may never exceed the value of any one specific real-world currency unit, the fact of the matter is that you can attain a certain buying power either through a certain amount of in-game gold or a certain amount of real-world currency.
Not long ago, one gold got you more buying power than one euro. I consider this an obvious product of inflated gold value, produced by peak interest since the game is still new, and efficient max level gold farmers are still in relatively short supply.
Long term, it’s a ridiculous thought that single use items like alpha siege golem plans should be priced around 1€, and legendary precursors in excess of 100€.
I don’t know why people think the prices are insane.
They’re like 3x the price they were when the game was out for a week and everyone was poor. Now people have some money together. How much do you feel they should be? Isn’t it easier to get 60s together now than it was to get 20s together on september 1st for the majority of players?
The price of buying gems with gold has steadily climbed since the TP was no longer offline more than online. It went from just over 20s for 100 gems to just over 30s in two weeks and from there to just over 40s two weeks later, then just over 50s two weeks after that and then up to just over 60s over this past week because anticipation for holloween gem store items has increased demand and potentially lowered incoming supply of gems as well for those spending real money on gems for the items instead of to get gold with them.
After the event is over one would expect the price to drop some as the demand goes down and supply goes back up. But as the average players gold on hand goes up the price will continue to rise with that average buying power. So I doubt that the price has reached the point where it will remain within for the long haul. Considering it is possible to get at least 1g per hour of play if you put your mind to it a bit. The rate might be significantly higher at the high levels. So the price even at the just over 60s isn’t that bad. I’ve spent the whole 7g had left after necessary purchases on my only character so far on gems. I could have had even more gold to spend had I been a little more focused on earning gold over experiencing content.