Guild Wars 2

Gw2’s number one issue in the economy isn’t champ farming nor is it item flipping. No, it’s so much simpler than that. The main issue with this economy is the currency inflation. The best ways to make money and the most popular ways to make money is producing a ton of new gold. That 1g you get at the end of CoF P1 is new money that ANet’s reward system just created. Also, the small amount of money you get from loot bags/boxes is created money as well. ANet, with these systems in place, you set yourself up for your own destruction!

Now here’s my solution, however it’s quite radical:

Stop producing new money (thus no need for any new or existing gold sinks)

Make crafting a lot harder to level (Will protect the value of gathered resources)

Make P2P trade an option (The BL is a listing service, make it an option to use it or not)

Replace the gold you get from bags/boxes and dungeons with a higher chance to get better crafting mats and at higher quantities.

In conclusion, inflation can be fixed if no new money is produced. Some might think “Crampz! Won’t resources inflate the economy!?!?” Well… You tell me the last time a tree you chopped down gave you money instead of logs.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/wat-meme.jpg

If you’re serious:

So then gold will become a commodity instead of materials. This changes absolutely nothing. With the TP fees and WP costs that remove gold entirely from circulation, gold will become nonexistent in due time. Inflation doesn’t equate to some items gaining monetary value, it’s if everything costs more. That’s definitely not the case.

This is one of the most insane tinfoil-hat style posts I’ve seen in a while. +1 for impressive trolling or flat out insanity

All the new accounts that come in and can’t make any gold except from farming, selling on the trading post and then farming some more will send you their sincere thanks. Who wants to do those dungeon runs anyway?

Once enough money is gone from gold sinks and from money in no longer played accounts then barter will make its appearance.

The economy isn’t broken. So your plan is to break it, then fix the economy by taking back all the things you just did? Why?

They actually nerfed the champ bag and that cut down the gold into the economy, but that didn’t stop inflation on “most of the material”.

I’m no economist but as a player’s point of view, all they care about is how long it take to acquire an item. Even if inflation stops like the OP says, everyone will be earning just lower gold per hour, and takes the same time to acquire say “a legendary”.

The problem with stopping introducing new sources of gold is that is cements the current have / have not relationships. New people are generally hosed, as they don’t have anything of value.

I think the better fix is to increase drop rates of high valued items to keep their price in check.

However, a better alternative is to say “kitten it” to the whole economy and ignore it.

Get you’re level 80 gear and then play the living story only and WvW.

You can try to get the cosmetic doo dad if you want. But IMO that game is boring and there are better ones to play.

Everyone knows that the real problem in any economy is not the money. Money is only a means of trading. No, it’s other people that are the real problem.

I want full immersion and I want it nao.

Me: “Evon, I’m da slayer and commander of the entire Tyrian Armed Forces. We just made a new recruitment slogan – are you TAF enough? – and that really tired me out, so I need to reward myself with a legendary sword. Hand it over, Trahearne said it’s ok.”

Evon: “Of course oh mightly slayer, just please don’t get impatient and hurt me like those hordes of undead.”

Me: “Don’t worry, but I like your jacket, let me try it on.”

Why fix something that isn’t actually broken?

Inflation is going to be present in any growing economy. It just needs to be monitored and not allowed to be out of control (and GW2s is NOT out of control). BTW, pointing to 2 related and unique markets in an economy (Precursors and Legendary Weapons) as examples to represent the entire economy is not valid.

If inflation were an issue I’d think we’d see drastic price increases in common commodities.

Yeah, this doesn’t really make much sense. The economy isn’t broken, inflation isn’t to a point where dramatic changes need to happen, and for every gold sink, you need to have a gold faucet. (The gold must flow) If every gold faucet is removed, as said before, gold will eventually be gone, or become totally useless, as a barter system will replace it. I agree it does appear that inflation is an issue, especially in the rising costs of T6 mats, but I feel that largely due to the higher demand. 1 year ago T6 was at a decent price, but has gone up considerably since. Why is that? More people are making legendaries, or multiple legendaries than they were 1 year ago. T6 mats are much more in demand now, thus the prices going up. Silk prices are the same way. Silk was/is WAY too common because there were few uses for it. Introduce Ascended crafting. you need at least 300 bolts per piece (at least for heavy). More people are now crafting Ascended armor as end game, thus silk is much more in demand, and the prices rise accordingly. The same thing will happen to jewels if/when jeweler goes up to 500.

P2P trading has been discussed at length in several other threads. I’ll just say its not a good idea and leave it at that.

The price of an item isn’t set by ANet, it’s set by players. While ANet does control supply to a degree through drop tables, if players aren’t doing the content where those drops are occur, supply is affected.

But going back to prices. The price will rise and fall to balance incoming supply with those who want that item and can afford that price. If nobody can afford it, supplies go up, prices start going down.

If there is no more money coming in then eventually, through gold sinks and accounts with gold in the bank no longer playing, there will be an extreme deficit of gold in the economy. ANet can stave this off by 2 ways
1) eliminate all gold sinks.
2) after an account has not been logged on for a while the account is considered dead. ANet then strips the account and sends all gold and items to guild members. Accounts without a guild will have an estate sale.

The other option is to keep things the way they are now.

Astral Projections.7320:

The other option is to keep things the way they are now.

I second this proposal.

Astral Projections.7320:

If there is no more money coming in then eventually, through gold sinks and accounts with gold in the bank no longer playing, there will be an extreme deficit of gold in the economy. ANet can stave this off by 2 ways
1) eliminate all gold sinks.
2) after an account has not been logged on for a while the account is considered dead. ANet then strips the account and sends all gold and items to guild members. Accounts without a guild will have an estate sale.

The other option is to keep things the way they are now.

concerning #2: Ummm no. Lets say such an account is a soldier sent overseas, and is unable to play for X amount of time while he/she is away. They are punished, their account stripped, and deleted. So upon return, they fire up Gw2, looking forward to picking up where they left off, and glad that there is no sub fee and can do just that, only to find that they have to create a whole new account and start over from scratch. That is only one possible scenario. Doing something like this to their customer base would be way out of line. Even sub based games have the option of continuing where you left off if you stop paying the sub for a long time. Yeah, terrible idea.

The other option on the otherhand, keeping it as is…the best idea on this thread!

People really need to be more obvious when they are not serious.

John, care to comment about the rumour that you have a big red button on your desk, similar to the easy button but it’s glowing apparently – that would, if you press it, delete all gold from the game period. Undisclosed sources are saying you received special training in a monastery somewhere in the himalayas (where you may or may not have unvoluntarily gained insight into the life of alpacas) in order to responsibly operate this button. How do you manage? Do you receive extra compensation?

Even if you took every gold sink out of the game in addition to your proposed changes, this would lead to out of control deflation. As the money supply remains fixed and more and more items are created from the world, a single gold would be able to purchase more and more. Anyone sitting on a pile of gold when this hits would find himself soon able to buy mostly everything at vendor prices, and anyone who has all his money tied up in inventory would be up the creek without a paddle as his items become worthless. It wouldn’t fix the economy, it would kill it.

Vol.7601:

If inflation were an issue I’d think we’d see drastic price increases in common commodities.

Well to be fair there have been drastic increases in price in pretty much every common commodity over the past 12 months. Just expand pretty much any mat to a full year and you’ll notice everything has doubled or tripled in price.

T6 Blood: Doubled in price over last 12 months.
Totems: Doubled in price
Ectos: Doubled in price
All tiers of cloth: 5x increase in price
All tiers of metal: 3-10x increase

I could go on, but pretty much every mat I clicked on has doubled or more in price. The only mat I could find that was unaffected was lodestones, they seem immune to the change.

I don’t know if that means there is inflation or not, I won’t make that call, but prices have certainly seen a steep increase on almost all mats over the past year.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vol.7601:

If inflation were an issue I’d think we’d see drastic price increases in common commodities.

Well to be fair there have been drastic increases in price in pretty much every common commodity over the past 12 months. Just expand pretty much any mat to a full year and you’ll notice everything has doubled or tripled in price.

T6 Blood: Doubled in price over last 12 months.
Totems: Doubled in price
Ectos: Doubled in price
All tiers of cloth: 5x increase in price
All tiers of metal: 3-10x increase

I could go on, but pretty much every mat I clicked on has doubled or more in price. The only mat I could find that was unaffected was lodestones, they seem immune to the change.

I don’t know if that means there is inflation or not, I won’t make that call, but prices have certainly seen a steep increase on almost all mats over the past year.

Considering that’s half the life of the game … at it’s beginning, I would say that’s pretty reasonable.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vol.7601:

If inflation were an issue I’d think we’d see drastic price increases in common commodities.

Well to be fair there have been drastic increases in price in pretty much every common commodity over the past 12 months. Just expand pretty much any mat to a full year and you’ll notice everything has doubled or tripled in price.

T6 Blood: Doubled in price over last 12 months.
Totems: Doubled in price
Ectos: Doubled in price
All tiers of cloth: 5x increase in price
All tiers of metal: 3-10x increase

I could go on, but pretty much every mat I clicked on has doubled or more in price. The only mat I could find that was unaffected was lodestones, they seem immune to the change.

I don’t know if that means there is inflation or not, I won’t make that call, but prices have certainly seen a steep increase on almost all mats over the past year.

All except jewels and orbs, leather, wood, mithril, Almost all of the cooking mats, (I actually think omnom berries went down, but not sure). Most of the mats that have dramatic price increases are those used for Ascended and legendary crafting. Because they are in a lot more demand than they were a year ago. The supply has pretty much remained constant, but the demand has gone way up, the the higher prices to those mats. If there were no use for them beyond exotic crafting, prices would be much lower then they are currently.

T6 Blood may have doubled in price but supply dropped by 3/4rds while demand increased 50%. I don’t see inflation, I see a supply squeeze.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vol.7601:

If inflation were an issue I’d think we’d see drastic price increases in common commodities.

Well to be fair there have been drastic increases in price in pretty much every common commodity over the past 12 months. Just expand pretty much any mat to a full year and you’ll notice everything has doubled or tripled in price.

T6 Blood: Doubled in price over last 12 months.
Totems: Doubled in price
Ectos: Doubled in price
All tiers of cloth: 5x increase in price
All tiers of metal: 3-10x increase

I could go on, but pretty much every mat I clicked on has doubled or more in price. The only mat I could find that was unaffected was lodestones, they seem immune to the change.

I don’t know if that means there is inflation or not, I won’t make that call, but prices have certainly seen a steep increase on almost all mats over the past year.

I should probably be a bit more specific – if we saw drastic price rises due to an increase in money supply rather than an increase in demand, I’d be worried.

T6 Blood: – this one I cannot recall why the price has risen for some time
Totems: – rumored to be because of the ban of bots farming grawl
Ectos: – I cannot recall why but I do know there was a patch that skyrocketed ectos
All tiers of cloth: – this is because of ascended gear
All tiers of metal: – this is due to ascended gear

Again, just cause we see the word inflation being thrown around doesn’t mean it’s inflation. This word has soo many uses and I’m sure it also has plenty of debate in real economics, just like how people debate economic theories and which one is better.

Inflation caused by an increase in demand isn’t bad.

Inflation caused by an increase in money supply definitely is. And I’m 300% confident that JS has the tools to look at money supply.

All he has to do is pull up the metrics – how much gold was generated in the economy, on average in the past 6 months? How much gold was removed from the economy in the past 6 months?

If the difference between the two is alarmingly large (yes, deflation is bad too), then he would look at the CPI (or whatever basket of goods he can come up with) and generate his conclusions.

If we look at this past month’s release, Queen Pavillion, I would say that we had inflated prices, but nothing that was overly concerned that required drastic action. Instead, we have a donate bot for Lion’s Arch (would be interesting to see how much he has pocketed).

If this game had such an alarmingly high inflation rate, Anet, would have put some highly desirable items on vendor for a huge amount.

I.e. Chaos of Lyssa from a merchant valued at 100g + 100 gauntlet tickets + 1000 tokens

I remember when i made my Vision of the Mists at the end of 2012 i think, ectos were around 33s at that time.
And .. at that time i was making maybe 2-3g/h with farming, while now i make 6-10g.

Also even if a lot things are higher in price now, you must the the relations that it is simply also easier to earn more money. At least if you sell your stuff at the TP and don’t sell your crafting mats to the next NPC .. lol

All my opinion:

From an economic standpoint the game is fine. From a fun standpoint the economy is terrible. The fact that a care about how much fun the economy is means the game is in trouble.

John Smith.4610:

That’s a real button. Unfortunately, due to a labeling error, it’s now indistinguishable from my button that destroys the world. So right now it’s a very serous game of chicken with 50/50 odds of total planetary annihilation.

Push the button. Cmon, you know you want to…

tolunart.2095:

John Smith.4610:

That’s a real button. Unfortunately, due to a labeling error, it’s now indistinguishable from my button that destroys the world. So right now it’s a very serous game of chicken with 50/50 odds of total planetary annihilation.

Push the button. Cmon, you know you want to…

Yeah, why not? After all, no more repair costs and i got plenty of Revive Orbs.

T6 blood is used to craft all Berserker Equipment…..thus the constant (and possibly increasing) demand.

Brother Grimm.5176:

T6 blood is used to craft all Berserker Equipment…..thus the constant (and possibly increasing) demand.

No wonder it’s so dang high! I’m working toward my legendary, and the T6 blood is killing my pocket book. Even with buy orders it’s still 50s+ per. But I’m still plugging away.

Brother Grimm.5176:

T6 blood is used to craft all Berserker Equipment…..thus the constant (and possibly increasing) demand.

As well as more people making the infusions for ascended gear. Not just jewelery anymore.

John Smith.4610:

That’s a real button. Unfortunately, due to a labeling error, it’s now indistinguishable from my button that destroys the world. So right now it’s a very serous game of chicken with 50/50 odds of total planetary annihilation.

Being President of the John Smith is Awesome club, I’ve analyzed your witty humor these past 18 months, and have deduced that you’re British, ala Monty Python. That, and “Smith” is a very British name.

what we need is more gold sinks as all MMO do, because inflation is a constant problem, i think the best solution is a series of new skills that involve buying LARGE amounts of materials from npc and constructing them in a way that is satisfying yet has ZERO return profit…..sounds ridiculous you say? well it does without context! im thinking of a construction skill where you build your own house and spend OODLES of money doing it, it could go in the home instance and go from lv 1 being a shabby wooden shack with few benefits to lv 500 an enormous mansion with its own unique teleports and dungeons with unique monsters (and unique drops) and a fireplace/ banquet table where you can distribute food/legs and aquire strong buffs

Duke Nukem.6783:

what we need is more gold sinks as all MMO do, because inflation is a constant problem, i think the best solution is a series of new skills that involve buying LARGE amounts of materials from npc and constructing them in a way that is satisfying yet has ZERO return profit…..sounds ridiculous you say? well it does without context! im thinking of a construction skill where you build your own house and spend OODLES of money doing it, it could go in the home instance and go from lv 1 being a shabby wooden shack with few benefits to lv 500 an enormous mansion with its own unique teleports and dungeons with unique monsters (and unique drops) and a fireplace/ banquet table where you can distribute food/legs and aquire strong buffs

A Dev stated earlier that inflation isnt a problem in GW2.

Vol.7601:

Prices for backpieces have dropped 100%! We are in a period of massive deflation!

PANIC!

pdavis.8031:

Brother Grimm.5176:

T6 blood is used to craft all Berserker Equipment…..thus the constant (and possibly increasing) demand.

No wonder it’s so dang high! I’m working toward my legendary, and the T6 blood is killing my pocket book. Even with buy orders it’s still 50s+ per. But I’m still plugging away.

https://imgflip.com/i/9nwzy

Ken DeBoer.9268:

pdavis.8031:

Brother Grimm.5176:

T6 blood is used to craft all Berserker Equipment…..thus the constant (and possibly increasing) demand.

No wonder it’s so dang high! I’m working toward my legendary, and the T6 blood is killing my pocket book. Even with buy orders it’s still 50s+ per. But I’m still plugging away.

https://imgflip.com/i/9nwzy

lol thats awesome!!!

It’s true though, I’m not complaining that inflation is causing the prices to rise, or QQing about it. I deal with it, as its kind of expected as the more an item is in demand the higher the cost will be.

Sell all your blood high and store the gold from it. Then buy again when they go down.

eithinan.9841:

Sell all your blood high and store the gold from it. Then buy again when they go down.

A sandie and a cuppa is usually all i get when i sell my blood.
Its more of a donation, really.

Also, whoever says inflation is a problem…

You’re not looking at the buying power of players.
It’s a lot higher than what it used to be, for several reasons.
One being a very low entry level for easy and good rewards (look at dungeons / eotm).

At the same time there’s a high entry level for certain rewards, such as T6 Blood.
There’s no ‘’oh let’s do this and get 4 powerful blood as a reward’’. You can farm them, sort of, but even now it’s easier to buy them than to farm them. This is what’s causing prices to rise.

The way prices go down is pretty much this: Oh, this item is worth so much I’m going to sell it and buy other stuff with my money! Look at when dragon coffers were still dropping for instance. They dropped to 1s. This was because it was an easy side drop and people thought hey, this item is so easy to get it’s not worth a lot so I’m just going to sell it.
When in fact it should’ve been worth more, as it’s a limited time item and people were simply impatient for money. And in due time, prices adjusted. Same happens with any other item accordingly. Especially with commodities such as T6 blood. If people don’t feel it’s worth that much they will simply sell theirs more. If T6 blood was up to 3 gold now for instance, a lot of people would just sell it as it’s value doesn’t add up to that amount now. Maybe in 2 years from now it’s a lot easier to get money, and at that point it could just be worth 3 gold. Or maybe they remove more ways of making gold and then it’ll drop or stabilise more.

Anyhow, it feels a lot of the complaints are just rants that certain items are worth a lot without a lot of thought put behind why prices are what they are.