Guild Wars 2

… of items, what would they be? The index should contain a broad cross-section of items that when taken together represent an overall picture of the market. Does such an index already exist for the game? If not, how many items do you think would make it difficult to manipulate and truly represent the state of the market? 30? 50? 100?

You only take a sample when you can’t realistically acquire data for everything. ANET can take everything.

As for players, that’s a good question. I’d like to see ANET’s economist put out regular reports on the sats of the GW2 economy, just like CCP’s economist does for Eve Online.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

You only take a sample when you can’t realistically acquire data for everything. ANET can take everything.

As for players, that’s a good question. I’d like to see ANET’s economist put out regular reports on the sats of the GW2 economy, just like CCP’s economist does for Eve Online.

+1. I love how CCP does this with EVE. It adds a whole level of transparency and communication to the game which helps alleviate confusion on several levels.

I think John Smith is assuming that we are all intelligent enough to know that there is a bit of inflation from when you first launch the game and money has to be created from nothing. Please show us where John Smith said that there has been no inflation since launch or drop this lame, pointless strawman.

Also, the comment about the sample was in reference to the OP and your replying to it was completely out of context. FYI.

The goal would simply be to establish a dow type index for the game. The top 30, 50, 100 or whatever items that represent a baseline against which you could judge inflation and manipulation. Something like …

Ecto
Butter
Chocolate
Superior Rune of Divinity
… on and on

Until you had an index. (I realize I took all the hot topic ones).

I think you’d want to use only end game stuff.

Crafting mats index et.

You could do a precursor index or something like that as well.

It’s hard to find representative items from each category.

NoOneShotU.3479:

I think you’d want to use only end game stuff.

Crafting mats index et.

You could do a precursor index or something like that as well.

It’s hard to find representative items from each category.

It would depend on what the index is supposed to “represent”. If it’s meant to provide some measure of the economy as a whole, then it would need to include more than just the end game stuff.

What would probably work better would be a set of different indices to reflect different parts of the economy, but I’m not sure how you’d start deciding what these parts are or which items to include in the indices.

Astraea.6075:

It would depend on what the index is supposed to “represent”. If it’s meant to provide some measure of the economy as a whole, then it would need to include more than just the end game stuff.

What would probably work better would be a set of different indices to reflect different parts of the economy, but I’m not sure how you’d start deciding what these parts are or which items to include in the indices.

I’d like to see indexes for:
- Gathered resources
- High-end crafting mats (globs, T6 fine mats, etc)
- Craftable high-end equipment (lower tiers are byproducts of leveling the craft so not going anywhere)
- Non-craftable high-end equipment (Precursors might need a separate index, though their low numbers might mean the volatility is limited.)

Does anyone not living in Belgium actually know what a consumer index is?

I would simply use gold-to-gems. Gems have an extremely constant value given they’re technically backed by the three most important reserve currencies (pounds, euros and dollars). The amount of gold you get for gems directly translates to the value people give to gold. The prices of all goods in the game are directly related to this and because of that every good in the game can be expressed in euros.

By neglecting the inflation of the euro (because income levels tend to follow inflation on average) the gold to gem reflects the ingame inflation.

Even then, the game is technically still in launch phase so any estimates of inflation are worthless until the game is at least 1 year old and the market matures.

I think most of all of your questions can be answered by: http://www.gw2spidy.com/

An index of items?

Part 1: Common Crafting Mats

Part 2: Fine Crafting Mats

Parts 1 and 2 will probably want to be further split horizontally and vertically (avg price of T1 mats vs avg price of fangs, for example), if you’re doing real stats on it.

Part 3: White, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange Weapons and Armor for levels 70-80 (their average prices)

Part 4: Generic Dropped, Crafted, Randomly Forged, Mystic Forge Fixed Recipe Exotics (later Ascendeds instead)

Part 5: Ectos

Part 6: Gems

Part 7: Consumable buffs

Part 8: Superior Runes and Sigils

Part 9: Minis

But at that point you’re basically indexing the entire set of tradable items, so.

Colbear.6425:

But at that point you’re basically indexing the entire set of tradable items, so.

If you can index everything, doing anything less just means you risk inaccuracies in your conclusions. So why not index everything ?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Colbear.6425:

But at that point you’re basically indexing the entire set of tradable items, so.

If you can index everything, doing anything less just means you risk inaccuracies in your conclusions. So why not index everything ?

Because an index is usually based on goods players use on a consistent basis.
- foodstuff
- ecto
- mithril
- activators
- repair costs
- waypoints

that kind of thing

But since you don’t need any of that to play the game, the whole index is moot. IRL you can’t really go without heating, food or housing. That’s not really an option.