Guild Wars 2

1. So when I go to the trading post, it makes no sense how it’s set up. I can’t enter 1 gem, and see how much it cost me. I have to keep entering different amount of silver to figure out how much 1 gem will cost. Same the other way around. The interface is backwards.

2. How can I set orders? Like say I want to buy a gem when the price goes down to 15s. How do I put 15s in there so that when the price hits 15s, my purchase goes through?

You can’t set buy orders for gems.

How are the prices determined if nobody is setting orders? Just by the developer checking on the activity of players buying and selling gems to each other?

You can’t. The cost is based on some sort of algorithm that takes the amount of gems available vs the amount of gold available (in the “bank”) into consideration.

crimlet.9872:

2. How can I set orders? Like say I want to buy a gem when the price goes down to 15s. How do I put 15s in there so that when the price hits 15s, my purchase goes through?

With the tools provided to you by ArenaNet, you can’t. If however you use your own tools, then creating buy/sell orders for gems is just another possibility.

For something a little less complex, you can use an app to keep watch and alert you when the gem prices become a certain amount. example.

crimlet.9872:

How are the prices determined if nobody is setting orders? Just by the developer checking on the activity of players buying and selling gems to each other?

The exchange itself was set up with an enormous amount of gems and a bit of gold when the game went live. The ratio between these two set the base exchange rate which is adjusted by +/- 15% into the two rates you see.

As players buy gems with gold, the amount of gold in the exchange goes up while the amount of gems remaining goes down which makes the ratio between the two go up. Selling gems for gold does the opposite.

The automatic and mechanical nature of the exchange is so players do not use gems as simply another investment item on the TP. The gap in the two exchange rates, the gems to gold is 72.25% (85% x 85%) of the gold to gems rate, discourages using gems as a storage medium for players. If you buy gems with gold they want you to spend that in the gem store.

Thanks. I really wasn’t so much worried about being able to place buy/sell orders as much as figuring out how prices are determined without that ability in place. Because there’s a chart there that only shows like the past week or so. So I guess the developer just determines how much they want to set the prices even though the buying/selling of gems is between players?

The developers do nothing to determine the price that gets set. It’s based entirely on how many gems players are getting by spending gold, and on the flip side, how many gems (either bought with gold in the past, or obtained via credit card) are being converted back into gold.

The only way ArenaNet influences the gem rates is by introducing or removing items from the gem store. If a desirable item is added, then more people will convert gold to gems, and the rate will change based off of that.

I don’t really get it. And I can’t seem to find any YouTube video explaining how the exchange works and the fees. If players can’t set the price for how much they want to sell their gems/gold for, it has to be set by the developer.

So basically, players can buy gems for real money. If they want to use those gems to buy gold, they can only sell them to players who want to buy gems with gold. However, they can’t set the price of how much they want to sell their gems for. Therefore, the price has to be set by the developer. A player can’t input any price he would like to sell his gems for. He has to sell his gems for whatever price the developer has been set by the developer.

Likewise, based on that price, the price of buying gems for gold would be set at a higher price so that a portion of gold is sunk. The wiki doesn’t really explain the fees involved on both ends.

The prices are set by an internal formula, based on the ratio of Gem vs Gold existing in the Gem Exchange pot. For example: 50,000 Gems vs 10,000 Gold in the pot = X.

Also, players are not buying and selling directly from each other. All your interactions are with the Gem Exchange. If you want to buy 1,000 Gems, you’re paying X amount of Gold to the pot. Same as if you wanted 100 Gold, you’re paying X amount of Gems to the pot.

As players buy and sell, the ratios change. The more Gems players buy, the more expensive each Gem will cost to the next transaction. That’s why you’ll see prices spike when there’s good stuff in the Gem Store.

I thought gems bought with game money can only be bought from other players. So the game can’t create gems in the same way it can create items when you buy them at the vendor. Don’t the gems have to come from other players? Meaning that all the gems in the game originated from a player using real cash money to buy them. And every gem for sale is in some player’s account.

Here are a couple of sources where you can see the exchange rates while out of the game. They each have a reasonably long history but with the occasional dropout of data.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

This goes all the way back to the beginning but it does suffer from data drop outs as well as thinning older data so while the most recent charts have roughly a sample every 2 minutes, data kept from a year ago may only be once an hour or even once a day.

http://www.gw2tp.com/gems

Doesn’t goes as far back as the one on GW2Spidy but it’s sample rate is once an hour for the entire history. Also it only tracks the gold to gem price since as I stated the gem to gold price is 72.25% of the gold to gem price.

Thanks. Those graphs tell alot. In fact the upward trend of the exchange rate is pretty drastic. Makes me not feel so bad about buying 10 gems today. Rate per gem might go down some tomorrow, but it really looks like the rate will eventually continue to climb. The profit for selling back 10 gems probably won’t be that much, but it’s pretty fun.

So it does in fact seem like the exchange is definitely not with the developer, but with gems/gold from other players. Also it seems like the prices are determined by the developer. Not giving players the ability to set their own prices like in the item auction.

crimlet.9872:

I thought gems bought with game money can only be bought from other players. So the game can’t create gems in the same way it can create items when you buy them at the vendor. Don’t the gems have to come from other players? Meaning that all the gems in the game originated from a player using real cash money to buy them. And every gem for sale is in some player’s account.

Yes that’s true. Gems come from direct purchases from Anet, or through bonuses given by AP rewards, or other type of promotional offerings. But Anet also created a large pool of Gems when the game first started, and placed them into the Gem Exchange. As more players buy Gems with Gold, those Gems removed are never replaced automatically. It requires players selling Gems back to the Gem Exchange for Gold.

So as you see over time, the price per Gem has gone up. That means more players are buying Gems with Gold, than buying Gold with Gems.

crimlet.9872:

Thanks. Those graphs tell alot. In fact the upward trend of the exchange rate is pretty drastic. Makes me not feel so bad about buying 10 gems today. Rate per gem might go down some tomorrow, but it really looks like the rate will eventually continue to climb. The profit for selling back 10 gems probably won’t be that much, but it’s pretty fun.

So it does in fact seem like the exchange is definitely not with the developer, but with gems/gold from other players. Also it seems like the prices are determined by the developer. Not giving players the ability to set their own prices like in the item auction.

Again from the top.

The Gem Exchange has two pools. One for gems and one for gold. Back when the game was launched they seeded the store with a ton of gems and not a lot of gold. For my example I will use one billion (1,000,000,000) gems and 3 million (3,000,000) gold. After launch the only way gems or gold are added to the exchange is directly from a player. The exchange itself doesn’t create gold or gems out of thin air.

A ratio is calculated between the two pools which in my example is 100 gems are equal to 30s. The two rates we see are based on this. The Gold to Gem rate is the ratio divided by 0.85 while the Gem to Gold rate is the ration multiplied by 0.85. Another way to look at it is first the gold you are willing to pay get’s 15% knocked off (gold sink) and then that amount is used to determine the amount of gems you will get. If you are paying gems for gold, first the amount of gold is calculated based on the ratio for that number of gems and then you get only 85% of that with the other 15% again going into a gold sink.

Buying Gems will increase the amount of gold while decreasing the amount of gems in the exchange. Thus with fewer gems but more gold in the exchange, each gem is now worth more and the rates increase. Buying Gold with gems the reverse is true.

On one hand it’s true that the devs set the rate but it’s better to say they set up the mechanism that automatically calculates the rate continuously. But after the initial seeding, there is no dev interference. All the gold and gems flowing in and out of the exchange are due to player activity. Until a balance is achieved in buying and selling gems over the long term, the rate will increase (since long term more gems are currently bought than sold).

The purpose of the exchange is to provide a legitimate means for players to buy gold with cash, via gem purchases. The buying gems side of the exchange is how the devs “fund” the selling gold side so they aren’t injecting “new” gold into the game’s economy. Also it means that unless restocked by players selling gems, the amount of gems in the exchange are finite. In theory it could run out. That said as the exchange starts to run dry the gem to gold rate would skyrocket making it attractive to buy gems solely to convert to gold which will lower the rates again.