Guild Wars 2

I should have been more specific about power leveling, and stated that this would happen when having a max level character was more common. People with a large disposable source of cash see the benefits of learning a new craft (gaining soulbind on acquire for instance). This will not inflate the price of easy to obtain copper. It would be balanced by the demand of people learning more/new crafts with the supply on the lower end characters, or higher level chars willing to invest the time. I saw similar trends in WoW. As more players became higher level, and as the level cap increased (along with the potential to make money) the basic ore prices went way beyond anything of equal value the vendor could offer. It was very productive for a low level character to sell some of their basic materials on the auction house: they could use that relatively large amount of money to buy a great deal of lower level vendor sold items, or use it to buy good player items also for sale on the auction house.

It will be interesting to see where things sit in 1 or 2 months from now.

Exchange Rates pre-launch August 24th 9pm PDT (first 4 hours of trading before BLTC goes down)
40s buys 100 gems
100 gems buys 30 silver

Exchange Rates today
36s20c buys 100 gems
100 gems buys 25s92

Does anyone have record of the record lows and highs? I see 47 for gems and 37 for silver within the past 5 days,but on the graph that looks like two very strange spikes. And thoughts on the source of these?

There’s a nice chart put together by an open source project. The data is collected hourly I believe, and it shows several interesting spikes.

I had no idea there were spikes like that, pretty crazy.

Personally, I did see one spike that I thought was out of sorts. In other games I’ve played, I noticed the market price of items was always elevated from Friday nights to about Sunday mid-day. The logical assumption is that more people are on at these times so demand peaks at these times during the week. I started to do my buying off peak and selling on peak with good results. I’m going to give it a few more weeks to see how the gem market sorts itself out, but I was watching for the same thing. Strangely, this past Thursday there was a very steady increase in Gem prices (pretty much a line) then it dropped right off and was basically the week low. I’m not sure if people were trying to inflate the market to sell their gems for more or what but it was odd. This weekend the price didn’t seem to climb a whole lot either.

In my opinion, 2 things should be done to Guild Wars 2, regarding the economy:

1 – Lower the vendor value of Junk items, but create Collectors – NPCs spread across the map that collect specific Junk items, just like in Guild Wars, trading them for useful items. Unlike in Guild Wars, however, what they give you could vary each day: random materials, more currency than the Junk item’s worth, etc.
2 – Incorporate the Trader system from Guild Wars 1.

To do that, you should:
- Add material costs (along the normal cost) to as many item types as possible, including normal and karma gear vendors. Essentially, any item that is craftable – Food, swords, runes, bags – should have an inherent material cost wherever you buy them.
Note: Essentially, only the gathering tools and other “baseline” consumables should be sold exclusively for currency, and even this price could fluctuate according to supply and demand.

- Add NPCs that buy and sell specific types of items (Metal traders, Fabric traders, etc)
- Make the various NPCs in the game fluctuate the prices they sell/buy items for according to supply and demand: the more they have, the cheaper they buy/sell the items for.
- Materials sold by players in the Trading Post below the prices offered by the Material Traders would be “automatically” bought by the Material Traders, essentially preventing prices from getting too low, and would in turn add to the Traders’ “supply”.

I like the idea of collector…it adds another subgame into it.

Adding NPC that buys/sell according to supply demand however, I don’t see the point of it. Price of item is already being determined by supply/demand of players, so I don’t see how it adds value to the existing system. There is also the difficulty on deriving an artificial model to price goods according to supply and demand…why do it when it is already been done with the current system with human players? It the point is to prevent the price from getting too low or too high…that’s artificially applying a price ceiling/floor…thus no longer reflects the true value of an item. It will create more mess and addresses nothing.

wrt spikes in gem pricing:

-reddit user who spent $2.3k USD. i doubt this is an isolated case
-conversion tax discourages the average user from hoarding gems, esp. as most see tp prices as a sign of deflation/scarcity of gold
-select few have an incredible fortune to spend on gems in bulk buys

wrt other stuff:

i think revenant said it very well. personally, despite the many gold sinks in-game, i see massive inflation, esp. as the market shifts from [few maxed crafters] -> [many maxed crafters]…just that right now the money coming into existence in the game makes its way to a small subset of players

and nurvus i think your idea of material traders will either mean they have to implement a specific/algorithmic price floor for the material traders, or the material traders will also be pushed down to current npc prices. in agreement w/ wazabi here. other than that i do like collecting things

There are a number of people posting in this thread who have expressed variants of the theory “If the Guild Wars 2 economy were more like the EVE Online economy, then things would sell for more than the cost of the components.” As a highly-experienced EVE player who used to spend a LOT of time working in the EVE economy, and made a LOT of isk (in a slow day, I’d only turn over 2 billion), I can assure you that this is not the case. The complexity of the EVE economy does not remove this phenomenon, it just hides it.

For 3 months, my corporation made a 5% profit on buying battleships (that had been constructed by players), recycling them into minerals, and selling those minerals. We increased that to a 15% profit when a mining company that was branching out into manufacturing asked us for a long-term contract to buy battleships from them at fixed prices. Eventually, we took pity on them and bought the minerals from them instead, meaning that they could save money on manufacturing costs, and we could save money on recycling costs. Everybody won (except the NPCs).

When you consider that a battleship in EVE costs you the minerals + mineral wastage factor + blueprint costs + labor costs + assembly line time + skillbook costs +skill training time, that’s a lot of effort to go to – they were using probably 120,000,000 isk of resources to make something that we would buy for 95,000,000 isk, recycle (incurring recycling fees +recycling mineral wastage) and then sell the minerals for 100,000,000 isk.

The complexity of EVE and the inefficiencies built into the market do not mean that players are guaranteed to sell above their costs, but it does mean that other players will take advantage of that behaviour and make it less visible. (When we bought the battleships and made 15%, we did it using off-market trading mechanisms.)

If Guild Wars 2 allowed green wood dowels to be salvaged, it would probably be a very profitable business. But even in an economy where manufacturing has significant time and capital costs (like EVE), game players will sell below cost, because they are deriving satisfaction from making something. In Guild Wars 2, where manufacturing is near-instant, has no cost aside from the materials, and awards XP, the price of the components will always be higher than the cost of the manufactured goods. I don’t see that as a problem. It’s weird, but it’s OK.

(There are things you can make in EVE and sell at profitable margins. But as soon as you tell anybody what they are, the margins evaporate.)

Wazabi and Error, I see what you mean regarding the traders.
However, what did you think of making neary every item (of a craftable type) that is sold by NPCs have material costs (just like weapons and armor sold by NPCs in Guild Wars) in addition to a (reduced) currency cost?

A vendor Sword, for example, instead of costing around 80 copper, could cost around 20 copper plus some Copper Ores.

This could help create a bottom ceiling for Ores.

If you are going to speak about the game economy and use normal economic terms then learn what they mean.

In economic terms currency(gold) does not deflate or inflate – rather the rest of the economy does with respect to currency.

@nurvus
I personally don’t mind…It makes it more interesting. It also increases the demand of those materials…but given that people are complaining about mat being too costly for them to level their craft…that will only lead to more complain…

Nurvus.2891:

Wazabi and Error, I see what you mean regarding the traders.
However, what did you think of making neary every item (of a craftable type) that is sold by NPCs have material costs (just like weapons and armor sold by NPCs in Guild Wars) in addition to a (reduced) currency cost?

A vendor Sword, for example, instead of costing around 80 copper, could cost around 20 copper plus some Copper Ores.

This could help create a bottom ceiling for Ores.

i love this idea in the way that it would be something fun to trade

i think there may be unintended consequences depending on implementation though. like, will the npcs also buy from players?…we currently can’t salvage for fine mats (99% sure?)

…sidenote, i get the feeling anet doesn’t want us converting karma->gold on certain types of items…

I’d like to add 2 more cents to this topic now that we’ve been playing the game more. I’ve heard people say that Anet didn’t design the crafting system for people to make money. I’m cool with that, and am find with the way the TP operates atm.

For a very reasonable amount of money, a person leveling up their character can re-equip their armour/weapons that are of lower level. This is due to the fact that so many people find items, don’t need them and sell them for a small profit (compared to the vendor) on the TP. They get some extra coin, the player gets transitional gear for a good deal and everyone wins. The flip side of this is that you sell crafting materials you don’t need for a reasonable amount of money.

That said I expect that the best max level stuff will be significantly more since people will be making money and not really spending it on a whole lot (I’m not sure what the cash sinks are end game besides gems). I’m good with that too, the legendary stuff will be insanely expensive but I’m sure everything else will still be “reasonable.”

Let’s not forget there are fansites dedicated to nothing else than listing how much copper (not gold) you can squeeze from crafting which items. Those players will always supply enough to fill up any demand.

Why would you bump a 2 wek old thread that is literally nonsense?

Just in case youre ignorant(its non sense because gold gold is the currency and in economic terms inflation and deflation refer to what happens to the rest of the economy with respect to currency.)

How about Anet just making nodes so that they can only be mined by 1 person…not everyone? It worked in all other games, it can work here as well. Mats will become valuable again. Also, Anet could make it a requirement that lower level mats are needed in higher level recipe’s. Lots can be done. The economy in this game needs major work. I want to craft and make profit.

Anet should also nerf xp gains from crafting. Everyone being able to be awesome at everything, and an abundant supply of everything leads to mediocre crafting and economy. Anet screwed the pooch on this aspect of the game.

This entire thread misses a major concept that is undermining the entire economy and that is bots. With the mechanic of these bots being able to place everything on the TP without taking a break we get an abundant of supply with zero opportunity cost. With the TP being global, one server’s bots can affect the entire community. No solution here is right or wrong until they fix the rampaged botting to see how the economy adjusts. And the damage is so heavily done right now, it could take 2+ weeks for the botted items to be removed from the TP and that money in the economy to be taxed out (money multiplier theory). See every time a bot sells an item at Vendor cost or below, and a real player buys it. That currency is then accumulated by the gold farmers and sold to the player for $10 through their site seeking their legendary. That gold he just bought is reintroduced in the economy through the TP mostly. There it is taxed, and comes out in other players hands. Those players spend the money to where it’s slowly taxed to less then the amount.

But the Bots keep going, when we go to sleep they’re rocko-socko’n the mobs. Getting drops, and supplying the TP with junk and needed gear, we buy unsuspecting.

So any solution we think works on the economy is worthless until we abolish the junk good producers, because all it does is cause inflation. A legendary may have been craft-able for 300g two weeks ago will go for 700g in a week or two (example numbers). Adjusting an economy is many levers that need to be tweaked, never just one. But we can’t tweak any levers until we kill the bots.

I think the constant undercutting the TP adds a lot artificial deflation. It’s not so much a measure of buyers not agreeing on the “established” price, but instead people’s impatience. Undercutting should have a tax as well, increasing (for example) with the ratio of your item:supply at preceding increments. E.g. if there are ten tiny price increments (signifying severe undercutting) you’d have a fairly large tax.

When the undercut sale listing gets close enough to the highest existing buy offer, impatient players will just sell directly to that buyer. And the same thing would happen in reverse, so I’m not sure why we’d expect this to push prices consistently in one direction.

The fact of the matter is that right now the system sucks and nobody likes it.

I like it because it’s so much easier to manipulate and make profit off it compared to how normal auction houses work in MMOs.

Because of the enormous listing fees and taxes, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop the manipulation.