Guild Wars 2

I stopped buying gems for money because I realized what a waste it is. The only items that are not overpriced by a significant margin are the karma boosters. You can even get dyes way cheaper on the market by converting your gems to gold then you can buying the dye packs.

Its no wonder people want to buy gems with gold instead of with money and why gems don’t sell for much gold.

Increasing the buying power of gems (give us more for our money or make things cheaper) will increase their value for gold without hurting the people buying them for gold. That will directly net you more people buying them and converting them to gold, stabilizing the price more on the exchange.

I actually think gems should be worth less so people will have to pay more to receive the same amount of golf.

I support any policy that requires people to pay more to receive the same amount of golf.

I use to pay $10 for 9 holes, but the market right now just isn’t worth spending the money for so little holes.

The gems for gold exchange requires players to take the other side of the exchange and want gems for their gold. Their demand for gems in gold is directly related to the price level of items in the gem store.

Gold is extremely expensive on the exchange in comparison to 3rd party gold sellers, above and beyond the risk premiums you’d expect. The difference is due to the price level in the gem store. The more expensive things are in the gem store, the more gems people will demand for their gold to get equal value, which causes a higher exchange rate at a lower volume.

The exchange rate would be much more attractive for the gems to gold side if items in the gem store were more priced more closely to their revenue maximizing price – that would cause higher demand for gems, and a lower equilibrium price, at a higher volume.

The guy above me summed it up in a far more elegant matter.

Also to put this in context, I have spent over $100 on gems. I would continue to spend RL money as I am pretty well off however I feel I am being ripped off at every turn whether I am converting gems into gold or simply buying items from the shop

All boosters besides Karma need at minimum a 50% reduction in price. Black lion keys need at least a 50% reduction in price. Black Lion Salvage kit needs a 50% hit as well.

Pretty much take all prices and cut them in half and only then will I even consider spending money again.

Gems fail for 3 reasons.

1 The trade tax is too high.

2 You get hit twice with the trade tax if you plan to convert gems into items for sale of the market.

3 The trade values are not set by the market. They are set by a contrived algorithm that causes the trade ratio to shift slightly but only around an attractor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor ) determined by the devs.

The prices for gems with IRL money are way too high. 10€ for a character slot?
i would love to spend some more money on this game but most market items are way too much. 5€ for a character slot seems more than enough.
If prices would be better, a lot of people would like to spend more money on it i guess. Now everyone is buying it with ingame gold

There is a reason the conversion is high people are holding on to their gems.

I’m no economics by no mean , but would’t lowering prices at tp just equal to lowering prices for gems (IRL money —→ gems ) and therefore devaluing gems. Witch would lead to making gems less expensive because one doesn’t need as much gems to buy the item they plan on buying? or am i wrong?

And yes the value of gems are quite crappy right now, but that’s because the demand of golf is quite high right now, you know people want to get there swings maxed out. But then when people start to feel that they are finished with there gear they will start spending the coins on gems and ther fore making the gem price go up and making it more valuable.

Also, IF they would like to increase the value of gems in compared to gold they would need to increase the taxes when people buy gems. ie:

before the value increase:

gold —→ gems
give 1,176g to recive 100gems // 15% tax (efficient trade is 1g to 100gems)

gems —-→ gold
give 100gems to recive 0.85g // 15% tax ( efficient trade is 100gems to 1 gold)

after value increase:

gold —→ gems
give 1,25g to recive 100gems // 20% tax (efficient trade is 1g to 100gems )

gems —-→ gold
give 100gems to recive 0,9g // 10% tax ( efficient trade is 1g to 111gems)

yes the overall tax is changed but I’m sure that can be fixed with better numbers. that’s the only thing they can do to make gems more valuable. however, I’m 99.999999% sure that they know this and that they will tweek the number if they feel its needed. u don’t need to come to the forum and suggest flawed suggestions. I’m not saying that mine will do the trick but I’m quite sure yours won’t.

Waraxx.4286:

I’m no economics by no mean , but would’t lowering prices at tp just equal to lowering prices for gems (IRL money —-> gems ) and therefore devaluing gems. Witch would lead to making gems less expensive because one doesn’t need as much gems to buy the item they plan on buying? or am i wrong?

And yes the value of gems are quite crappy right now, but that’s because the demand of golf is quite high right now, you know people want to get there swings maxed out. But then when people start to feel that they are finished with there gear they will start spending the coins on gems and ther fore making the gem price go up and making it more valuable.

Also, IF they would like to increase the value of gems in compared to gold they would need to increase the taxes when people buy gems. ie:

before the value increase:

gold —-> gems
give 1,176g to recive 100gems // 15% tax (efficient trade is 1g to 100gems)

gems —--> gold
give 100gems to recive 0.85g // 15% tax ( efficient trade is 100gems to 1 gold)

after value increase:

gold —-> gems
give 1,25g to recive 100gems // 20% tax (efficient trade is 1g to 100gems )

gems —--> gold
give 100gems to recive 0,9g // 10% tax ( efficient trade is 1g to 111gems)

yes the overall tax is changed but I’m sure that can be fixed with better numbers. that’s the only thing they can do to make gems more valuable. however, I’m 99.999999% sure that they know this and that they will tweek the number if they feel its needed. u don’t need to come to the forum and suggest flawed suggestions. I’m not saying that mine will do the trick but I’m quite sure yours won’t.

The players don’t set the price of gems directly. What you are describing assumes that gems would be exchanged in a free market system and this is not the case. Even after exchange for gems to gold would equalize and become lower over time (This is an assumption because we don’t completely understand the mechanics behind their exchange) it would still be more realistic to buy things from the cash shop with real money, which I am sure Arenanet wants instead of the current situation where everyone just buys gems with gold.

Before you call my suggestion flawed make sure you understand more than 1/4 of it.

The title says money has weak buying power, that is the point and its not flawed in the least.

it only has weak buying power going through ANet. If you go through a gold seller and convert your bought gold to gems, you get 3 to 3.5 times the gems.

Sadly this is why I stopped buying gems from ANet, not because I buy gold from gold sellers (which I do not) but because I realized how much they are charging for so little.

IRL money has VERY weak buying power in game. For 10 bucks I get 800 gems which converts into what? 4-8 gold I think? That same 10 bucks to some random gold seller buys 20+ gold.

I don’t condone the use of gold sellers because of the methods they use to get their gold. If for a second I thought they were legitimately farming that gold than I’d be okay. However I believe they hack accounts and bot the crap out of everything and that ruins the game.

Still, the economy isn’t all that shiny and people who want to spend money tend to want to get the most for their dollar. Right now, the gem store is insulting us. You may as well include a link TO gold sellers for all the people actually spending money in your store.

Fix your prices, fix the values, then you’ll have something. Until then, you’ll never beat the gold farmers.

Sundial.9015:

The players don’t set the price of gems directly. What you are describing assumes that gems would be exchanged in a free market system and this is not the case. Even after exchange for gems to gold would equalize and become lower over time (This is an assumption because we don’t completely understand the mechanics behind their exchange) it would still be more realistic to buy things from the cash shop with real money, which I am sure Arenanet wants instead of the current situation where everyone just buys gems with gold.

Before you call my suggestion flawed make sure you understand more than 1/4 of it.

The title says money has weak buying power, that is the point and its not flawed in the least.

As you describe your solution I think i understand it perfectly well thank you. why exactly do you think reducing the prices on the gemstore would increase the buypower of gems? the items would still cost the same amount of gold ( traded gold to gems ) but the things would only be cheaper, witch is not making it have a bigger buyvalue. if you lower all the prices with 50 % in the gemstore would only make the price g/100g become 50% lower. yes people would get 50% more stuff because things were cheaper but this does not increase the value of gems compared to gold. if you want to artificially change the value of gems then you have to change the ratio of taxes as I said, otherwise its only based on how much gems are being bought and how much is being sold.

please explain your solution, if you still think that I don’t understand it.

And yes i know that the gems / gold converter is not a 100% free market i think its mainly based around It. This they take up in another thread “who sets the gem prices” if I’m not wrong.

Waraxx, my solution isn’t so much about the gold/gem exchange as it is I feel things in the gem store are way to expensive for the money I am spending.

I shouldn’t really have speculated on the effects of the gold/gem exchange this would cause since that is not my main concern I am trying to convey with this post.

“Increasing the buying power of gems (give us more for our money or make things cheaper) will increase their value for gold without hurting the people buying them for gold”

I think that this is the reason to why i misunderstood your post. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I think it was this in a mix with some of the posts thereafter that i must have missunderstood. and now i understand, and tyour solution would indeed make money worth more itemwize but not goldwise. and i think that is what you were trying to acomplish.

anyway, agian, sorry