Increasing trading post tax.
On a personal level, having a sense of Entitlement isn’t bad or wrong. But I did say that you can’t use that an excuse to spread the wealth. Communism failed because of the same ideas you’re pushing. So if we already know it’s a bad idea, and proven through the collapse of countries, why are you still pushing this to happen in the GW2 economy?
That’s actually not why those countries failed. Not even remotely. As a rule of thumb, if Reagan said something, the opposite was probably true.
But boy, oh boy, I do NOT have the energy for a poli sci 101 argument on the gw2 forums tonight. I’m saving it for wvw reset.
If you compare a country based on Capitalism, and one that’s based on Communism, you’ll notice that one is prosperous and one isn’t. It would be similar to what some are advocating for here.
If you impose a mandate that all players must have equal wealth, then you eliminate the need for any type of reward structure. GW2 then turns into a single player console game, where the end game is just starting over with a new character.
first of all, communism has yet to exist it is an ideal that has never actually been implimented.
second of all communism is not an just an economic policy. Capitalism is an economic policy.
btw Pure capitialism fails, this is known, the most successful economies right now, including america are mixed economies.
Now, im not saying everyone needs to have even wealth, just pointing out that the whole capitilism vs communism idea is mostly theoretical and has no real analogs
@Gene You said, it was acceptable to take from the rich and give to the poor. Your words not mine.
Yes, under the argument that life isn’t fair. And under that argument, it is absolutely true.
I never said that. If you feel I implied it. You certainly are wrong.
The entire argument of “life isn’t fair” implies it. That’s what you’re not understanding.
Hopefully you will understand this time.
I understand just fine. You’re the one not understanding.
My sole intention with saying life isn’t fair. Had to do with. There are things we cannot control.
But this is something we -can- control.
Which is why I haven’t suggested spreading the wealth. Jesus Christ, Schizo is literally the only one that read my kittening suggestion.
You told me that if I can make 100 Gold doing “A”, then everyone should make 100 Gold doing “B”, C", or “D”. You want the wealth to be distributed equally, thus eliminating the different class of players. Anet (the State) would provide for and represent the interests of the Players (working class).
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
Schizo is literally the only one that read my kittening suggestion.
It might have something to do with where it is in the thread and the format in which it was presented.
I disagree with your suggestion as a solution, but it might be because I do not understand exactly what your suggestion is trying to solve.
I actually highly value my karma, laurels, badges of honor, and tokens. There are very specific things that you can only get through those currencies. I would say I value them higher than gold because of the scarcity and effort required in obtaining those currencies.
I place an extremely low value on gold because almost everything I can buy with gold, I can get through playing the game. While things like ascended items take cumulatively longer to acquire through this method, the option is still available to me.
If you add everything the same to all merchants that you can buy with gold, you aren’t decreasing the value of gold, you are only decreasing the value of those other currencies.
I agree with your assessment that PvP track rewards are a good step within the game. I also agree with your desire for precursors to be available through alternate methods, either crafting or hunting or some combination.
first of all, communism has yet to exist it is an ideal that has never actually been implimented.
second of all communism is not an just an economic policy. Capitalism is an economic policy.
btw Pure capitialism fails, this is known, the most successful economies right now, including america are mixed economies.
Now, im not saying everyone needs to have even wealth, just pointing out that the whole capitilism vs communism idea is mostly theoretical and has no real analogs
I was trying to point out that when one person feels Entitled to the same things as others, and rewarded based on the idea that everyone should share the wealth, that’s never a good thing IRL or in game.
Example – One person puts in effort to make 100 Gold on the Trading Post, so another person putting effort into harvesting Omnomnoms should get the same 100 Gold. This breaks the economy.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
first of all, communism has yet to exist it is an ideal that has never actually been implimented.
second of all communism is not an just an economic policy. Capitalism is an economic policy.
btw Pure capitialism fails, this is known, the most successful economies right now, including america are mixed economies.
Now, im not saying everyone needs to have even wealth, just pointing out that the whole capitilism vs communism idea is mostly theoretical and has no real analogs
I was trying to point out that when one person feels Entitled to the same things as others, and rewarded based on the idea that everyone should share the wealth, that’s never a good thing IRL or in game.
Example – One person puts in effort to make 100 Gold on the Trading Post, so another person putting effort into harvesting Omnomnoms should get the same 100 Gold. This breaks the economy.
That comes down to evaluating “effort” of two very different activities and determining equivalency.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
You told me that if I can make 100 Gold doing “A”, then everyone should make 100 Gold doing “B”, C", or “D”. You want the wealth to be distributed equally, thus eliminating the different class of players. Anet (the State) would provide for and represent the interests of the Players (working class).
Yes, based on effort.
But people kept saying: “Can’t do that because inflation in gold value and such”
So I suggested something completely different. Something incapable of hurting TP Players potential profits, something that doesn’t take anybody’s wealth away, something that doesn’t cause inflation. Something that would have no meaningful impact on ANet profits. Something that does all those things and yet allows everyone to “win”, whatever their given value of “win” is.
But everyone ignored it, so I said “kitten it” and went back to arguing extremes, because that’s all any of you actually care about or focus on.
You told me that if I can make 100 Gold doing “A”, then everyone should make 100 Gold doing “B”, C", or “D”. You want the wealth to be distributed equally, thus eliminating the different class of players. Anet (the State) would provide for and represent the interests of the Players (working class).
Yes, based on effort.
But people kept saying: “Can’t do that because inflation in gold value and such”
So I suggested something completely different. Something incapable of hurting TP Players potential profits, something that doesn’t take anybody’s wealth away, something that doesn’t cause inflation. Something that would have no meaningful impact on ANet profits. Something that does all those things and yet allows everyone to “win”, whatever their given value of “win” is.
But everyone ignored it, so I said “kitten it” and went back to arguing extremes, because that’s all any of you actually care about or focus on.
It was ignored? Life just isn’t fair is it gene.
But everyone ignored it, so I said “kitten it” and went back to arguing extremes, because that’s all any of you actually care about or focus on.
yet another attempt to claim to know the operation of “everyone’s” mind. Your assumptions have led to more than one false claim today.
I disagree with your suggestion as a solution, but it might be because I do not understand exactly what your suggestion is trying to solve.
My suggestion is trying to solve the problem where people, depending on the activities they find fun, cannot also be rewarded and get the things they want while having said fun.
My suggestion is trying to make it so people can do whatever they want, not hurt other people in the process, and get whatever items they desire by doing those activities, without cutting into ANet profits -or- the TP players potential profits.
To raise other currencies up to the level of gold in terms of how flexible they are as currencies, so everyone can obtain whatever they want in game with the skills they’re good at.
I don’t know if we’ll be able to see eye to eye on it.
It was ignored? Life just isn’t fair is it gene.
You’re right. Life isn’t fair. So the rich have no right to complain when the poor take their money. You have no right to complain when someone comes along and just takes your stuff.
Because life isn’t fair. And you don’t care or want it to be fair.
yet another attempt to claim to know the operation of “everyone’s” mind. Your assumptions have led to more than one false claim today.
I have only assumed incorrectly once, and I summarily apologized to you for it.
If you read through this entire thread, then you have no excuse to have not seen my suggestion.
If you didn’t read through the entire thread. What are you doing coming into the conversation without reading the rest of it?
(edited by Gene Archer.8560)
You have a very scewed view on what that saying means.
You have a very scewed view on what that saying means.
It means exactly what it says on the tin. If you want to use it as justification for something, then you have to accept that it can be used for justification of anything because of how all encompassing it is.
You don’t get to pick and choose what “life is unfair” gets applied to. It gets applied to everything if you intend to use it as an argument to keep people down or as a way to say “deal with it”.
In the terms of a “forum weapon”, it’s a nuke. Indiscriminate to all, regardless of position.
You told me that if I can make 100 Gold doing “A”, then everyone should make 100 Gold doing “B”, C", or “D”. You want the wealth to be distributed equally, thus eliminating the different class of players. Anet (the State) would provide for and represent the interests of the Players (working class).
Yes, based on effort.
But people kept saying: “Can’t do that because inflation in gold value and such”
So I suggested something completely different. Something incapable of hurting TP Players potential profits, something that doesn’t take anybody’s wealth away, something that doesn’t cause inflation. Something that would have no meaningful impact on ANet profits. Something that does all those things and yet allows everyone to “win”, whatever their given value of “win” is.
But everyone ignored it, so I said “kitten it” and went back to arguing extremes, because that’s all any of you actually care about or focus on.
You’re not taking my wealth away, you’re devaluing it by sharing the payouts I make with everyone else in this game. Assuming equal effort, your idea is that with my 100 Gold made within 5 minutes, the person who spent the same effort and time harvesting Omnom nodes should get 100 Gold too.
This leads to inflation. Inflation leads to anger of the free market. Anger leads to hate of the free market. And hate of the free market leads to the Socialist side.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
This leads to inflation. Inflation leads to anger of the free market. Anger leads to hate of the free market. And hate of the free market leads to the Socialist side.
If you’re just going to continue to ignore that I made a suggestion outside of the argument with you about effort, then I am done responding to you from this point forward, because you’re either being purposefully ignorant, or trolling.
Given your little “Dark Side” snark, I’m going with the latter. In which case, meaningful discourse is completely impossible with you and further words would only be wasted.
Oh I read it all, took a page from your little book. Copy and paste a portion of something someone said. To make it appear they said something else to make myself look all high and mighty.
I can point to many times you would take just enough of a comment that could represent something else than what the person was saying, attempting to justify your arguments. Your not the first, won’t be the last. But hey, some people need to do that so they can feel good about themselves.
So if you read through the entire thread and all of my posts, you must have seen my suggestion. The one where I did my kitten edest to be constructive and helpful. And if you did read it, but decided not to comment on it, that means you flat out ignored it.
So, you’ve proven me wrong how, exactly, when I say that people ignored that post when…you just now admitted to ignoring that post?
So now the question becomes, do the wealthy effect the value of high end items? Thinking about logical ways to decide this without data is hard. There are lot of vague terms here, like wealthy, average etc. Also there are many ways to look at it.
Lets say you look at it logically from a supply/demand standpoint
Item X has a high demand and a low supply (i say this is true)
Item X can only be reliably obtained by highest bidder (i say this is true)
logically this would suggest that the people who have money are the deciding factor for the value of this item.
another way of looking at it.
The market competition for dusk is say 866 gold (to start competing to get the item)
This means anyone who has not earned 866 gold cannot begin to compete
How much of the population has ever had 866 gold at one time?
Essentially i think that the truth is, the super rich 1% probably dont effect prices that much, because they are such a small amount compared to the volume of high end goods. But what about the 5%? what about the 10% what about the upper 15%
if the difference in earning between the upper 25% and 75% is huge, it means that 75% of people have to go to extreme measures to achieve what the upper 25% can achieve.
and thats really the big issue here at the end of the day. To compete with the upper echelon, you must join them. You must become one of the upper 25%, and the problem is that doing so, currently you have two options, farm hard and fast or play the TP. The tp is the most effecient method because it can earn more money than other activities when done well.
The big problem is one method is essentially generally, under our current systems degenerative play, and the other is playing the TP. Neither of these things is what the game was marketed as, or highlights the game features.
Hey all,
Please stay on-topic and avoid the personal digs at each other. We do welcome the discussion and debate, but only if it stays on-topic and folks aren’t taking shots at each other. Thanks for your understanding.
You will be rewarded accordingly, if you put in the same effort at the tp.
Where is the problem?That the same effort isn’t rewarded at the same level as the TP for the rest of the game. You’ve been following this thread, you already know this.
Well, i have to go with Fenrir here and disagree with your definition of effort.
I have done plenty of farming in this game and I have made plenty of profit on the TP.
Nothing in game comes close to equalling effort/risk you have to put into succesfully playing the tp. What you described as effort in pve, learning a jp, speedclear a dungeon, learn boss mechanics, takes time, of course, but once you nailed it, there is next to no change to your routine and you can do it over and over again, with nearly no shifts in circumstances, unless Anet changes the mechanics (dungeon revamp, champ bag gold nerf, etc.)
Playing the tp requires you to constantly shift your focus and find new ways to make a profit. Once you done your research on one market and start to make profits, it will be gone soon enough.
And dont tell me, flipping is easy enough, just look for an item with a price spread higher than 15%. Because flipping doesnt make people huge amounts of gold, thats a myth. Personally, i barely flip items because i have more lucrative markets with less competitors than flipping. And anybody else making lots of gold on the tp here will propably tell you the same: Just flipping items wont make you that much more gold than effective pve farming.
I will give you a few examples:
Long Term Speculation is one of my favourites by now. That means, i buy items that are high in supply right now, store them and hope to sell them in a couple of weeks/months for a multiple of the purchase price. That could be 5x, 10x, 50x or 100x higher. Looks very profitable but takes alot of effort. First of all, I need to research which items are high in supply right now and available cheap/under value. Then I need to analyze, why this item will be in higher demand in the future. That takes a great deal of knowledge of the game meta and mechanics in general, as i need to know every possible source of the item and if the items source will close, for example after an LS event is over, or if other possible sources will be opened up by Anet (reintroduction of limited time items).
Then i need to store these items, which takes space. Space costs gold, which adds to the initial investment, even though at a reduced cost because the space is reusable after i sold the item. I could immediately relist my item at 5, 10, or 20 times its value but i will have to pay 5% listing fee, which is an additional investment as well, so i rather store it, which also has the advantage that other players dont know how high my stock is and i can list my items in intervals, when i think it reached my desired price to not flood the market. So even though this kind of speculation seems to be a very high profit market, when i tell on the forums that i bought stacks of celestial recipes for a couple of silver during the bazaar and sold them between 50s and 30g a couple of months later, it doesnt mean that there was no additional cost (35 inventory slots) and risk (many of those stacks are still in my inventory or as a sell listing on the tp).
I also make quite some gold with opening lootbags because i have done extensive research myself on that matter. There nearly 150 different ones in game and the wiki has no are quite faulty droprates on many of them. So i went and bought at least 1000 of most of them, to do my own research. On many i have lost alot of gold during that research but at least i know now, what they drop and in what rates. So know i just observe the material market, which items are in demand at any given time (linen, silver doubloons, destroyer slivers), check the prices of the other items on the loot table and determine, which lootbag will give me the most projected profit today. All you will hear from me on the forums is that i got 5k of various lootbags on buy order over night and got an average of 1 silver profit for every lootbag i opened in the morning. But you dont know, how much gold i actually lost doing my research and the countless hours i invested to fill data of 100k+ lootbags into a spreadsheet.
This are just two examples to show you that your perceived effort in making LOTS of gold is actually way higher than you think and risk definately is a factor that should be accounted for.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Just a general question:
Assuming someone actually manages to prove that people that make lots of profit on the tp are bad for the game and we find a solution on how to minimise profit margins on the TP, how do you prevent people from attaining personal in game wealth with gems to gold conversion?
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
If you’re just going to continue to ignore that I made a suggestion outside of the argument with you about effort, then I am done responding to you from this point forward, because you’re either being purposefully ignorant, or trolling.
Given your little “Dark Side” snark, I’m going with the latter. In which case, meaningful discourse is completely impossible with you and further words would only be wasted.
You offered solutions to problems that don’t exist. You then justify your position by saying that everyone should be making the same money, as long as the effort is the same. Furthermore, you then try to explain that effort is effort, so there’s no difference to spending 5 minutes on the TP to make 100 Gold and harvesting a node or killing the Shadow Behemoth.
I’m merely trying to explain to you that your entire argument is flawed, and any implementation would lead to a catastrophic disaster for the economy.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
So if you read through the entire thread and all of my posts, you must have seen my suggestion. The one where I did my kitten edest to be constructive and helpful. And if you did read it, but decided not to comment on it, that means you flat out ignored it.
So, you’ve proven me wrong how, exactly, when I say that people ignored that post when…you just now admitted to ignoring that post?
Gene, i admire your effort in defending your suggestion. I even think its a good suggestion in general to push the rewards system of the various gameplay modes closer to equilibrium but it simply wont change much, as long as there is a gold/gem conversion in game. Devaluating gold in general would go against their business model.
Even if every item in game would be available via an exchange for account bound currencies, it wont enable you to get everything that you want. For your suggestion to work, we would need to get rid of gold altogether and i hope you agree that that is not a valid option.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
haha i like People like Mr Smith xD
Little question
Could we see the really rich People ingame, probably all Traders, as an important tool to take Money out of community? i mean the most just Play the TP to Play the TP, its their endgame. They Need to have so much Gold, that they cant even use all of them, just when they Change the Gold to gems for Special gem store items.
Just imagine what would happen if all rich People throw all Gold they have to the market. i think that could be a bigger problem
Safi/Clio Del Ray |Ranger, Elonas Reach,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestions-Gemstore-Items/page/31#post4533037
the skrittfinisher was my idea!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestions-Gemstore-Items/page/31#post4533037
the skrittfinisher was my idea!
You offered solutions to problems that don’t exist.
Just because you don’t perceive the inability to get items in a timely manner through anything other than gold as a problem doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.
I’m merely trying to explain to you that your entire argument is flawed, and any implementation would lead to a catastrophic disaster for the economy.
You’ve yet to explain how making gold just another option and boosting other currencies to be as flexible as gold, while making items bought through those currencies bound to prevent selling on the TP or vendoring would cause any catastrophic disaster to the economy.
Just imagine what would happen if all rich People throw all Gold they have to the market. i think that could be a bigger problem
Not much would happen.
They will make other people rich.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Just a general question:
Assuming someone actually manages to prove that people that make lots of profit on the tp are bad for the game and we find a solution on how to minimise profit margins on the TP, how do you prevent people from attaining personal in game wealth with gems to gold conversion?
Well even if they find that tp profit is having a bad effect, that doesnt mean the solution is to minimize profit. There are other solutions.
Also, the reality of the gems to gold conversion has to be considered, not just the theory. AKA their types of buying patterns, and also their numbers.
haha i like People like Mr Smith xD
Little question
Could we see the really rich People ingame, probably all Traders, as an important tool to take Money out of community? i mean the most just Play the TP to Play the TP, its their endgame. They Need to have so much Gold, that they cant even use all of them, just when they Change the Gold to gems for Special gem store items.
Just imagine what would happen if all rich People throw all Gold they have to the market. i think that could be a bigger problem
Anytime a TP player uses the TP to make a transaction, 15% of the coin used is destroyed. So yes, they’re very important to the health of the value of Gold. As for throwing all their money to the market, that does two things. 1) The game still loses 15% of all transactions due to the Gold Sink functions of the taxes, and 2) the money is just spread around to other players (depending on the items sold).
So if one rich TP player, or a dozen buy everything they want with the massive amount of Gold they have, they’re just making other players rich. The wealth in game just moved around, minus 15%.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
You’ve yet to explain how making gold just another option and boosting other currencies to be as flexible as gold, while making items bought through those currencies bound to prevent selling on the TP or vendoring would cause any catastrophic disaster to the economy.
Because gold is still an option and as long as it is, i will be able to earn more on the tp than you and buy stuff at a faster pace.
Assuming you play 2 hours a day, earn some karma, your laurel, some dungeon tokens or badges of honor to trade them for 20 t6 mats. Apart from that, you make some gold to buy 5 more, so you end up with 25 t6 mats for the day.
As you stated that making gold on the tp is easy and takes no time investment, why wouldnt i be able to play 90 minutes regular gameplay, earn enough account bound currency to get 18 t6 mats from it, then play the TP for 30 min and be able to buy 25 more from my profits?
Or i just play the tp for 2 hours and buy 100 t6 mats from my profits.
You still lose.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Gene, i admire your effort in defending your suggestion. I even think its a good suggestion in general to push the rewards system of the various gameplay modes closer to equilibrium but it simply wont change much, as long as there is a gold/gem conversion in game.
How do you figure? It would change everything because there would be -more- options. But at the end of the day, gold would still be important.
Devaluating gold in general would go against their business model.
Because of gems to gold? Gems to gold would still be worthwhile, because it means completely bypassing having to do anything to get items.
Even if every item in game would be available via an exchange for account bound currencies, it wont enable you to get everything that you want.
Except it would…? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.
For your suggestion to work, we would need to get rid of gold altogether
How so? Literally the only thing my suggestion did was bring other currencies to be on par with gold. That’s all. People will then just choose what currency they want to use based on the kinds of activities they gravitate towards.
and i hope you agree that that is not a valid option.
It’s not a valid option, you are right. But I disagree we would need to get rid of gold altogether.
People will still choose gold in my scenario. Not everyone will, but not everyone turns gems into gold, or crafts or does any numbers of things.
Not to be a biased jerk. But if you can think of anything even remotely better that isn’t the status quo, then by all means. I am all ears. I truly am. Until then, all you essentially keep saying is “no” and that’s about as helpful as the people saying “TP Barons are evil”
I mean, I don’t know what else to suggest personally, consider any other option is going to be met with “No”. This is the one idea I could think up that hurts nobody, not even ANet, because gems to gold would still be perfectly viable, and gem store items could still only be obtained through either money, or gold to gems, which most activities that my suggestion effects, hardly pay out gold anyway.
I’m merely trying to explain to you that your entire argument is flawed, and any implementation would lead to a catastrophic disaster for the economy.
You’ve yet to explain how making gold just another option and boosting other currencies to be as flexible as gold, while making items bought through those currencies bound to prevent selling on the TP or vendoring would cause any catastrophic disaster to the economy.
It doesn’t matter, that is not an option for Anet.
As it is now, casual players who have cash to spend but not a lot of time to play the game can buy gems and convert them to gold, and use this to supplement their limited ability to play by buying crafting mats, gear, etc. and get most of the things in the game when they want them.
Hardcore players with a lot of time to play the game but not much cash to spend can grind for mats, gear and gold, and convert gold to gems to buy anything they want from the cash shop.
This is how they set up the game, and this is intentional. Your proposal throws this out the window, giving hardcore players an advantage because now they can obtain more things through playing the game than casual players can by buying gems. This is bad for the game and bad for Anet’s profits, because it discourages people from buying gems.
The only solution to this would be to make karma, dungeon tokens and so on purchasable with gems, which would also make them purchasable with gold (convert gold to gems, buy karma with gems). This leaves the original “problem” of players who have a lot of gold from playing the TP being able to buy anything they want.
So, on the one hand, your solution leads to the game losing money and eventually closing, and on the other hand the solution to your solution leads to exactly the same situation you started with.
So, why would Anet want to put themselves out of business, or to pay their devs to devise and implement changes to the game that doesn’t actually change anything?
For your suggestion to work, we would need to get rid of gold altogether
How so? Literally the only thing my suggestion did was bring other currencies to be on par with gold. That’s all. People will then just choose what currency they want to use based on the kinds of activities they gravitate towards.
That would destabilize Gold, since now all other currencies are just like it. Why use Gold, when I have 10 million Karma to spend on everything I need?
Edit – and if this were to happen, the next logical step would be to put a tax on Karma.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
Furthermore, using tokens and multiple incompatible currencies is probably more unpopular than using a single currency for everything. If I want to buy something that costs 100 gold, and I have 50 gold and 50 karma, I can’t combine the two to buy the item. Without the ability to convert one currency to another, and with different in-game activities providing different currencies, a lot of players end up skipping content they want to experience and repeating content they don’t because they need a specific kind of token.
Anet has been moving away from this since launch. It’s why they haven’t expanded the selection of crafting mats and gear sold by karma vendors, and why they made BLTC weapon skins sellable.
I don’t keep up with PvP changes so I may be wrong about this, but aren’t they replacing PvP-specific currency with gold as rewards for playing that game mode? This alone would indicate that they are not inclined to introduce new tokens or make alternate currencies more a prominent part of the game.
Not to be a biased jerk. But if you can think of anything even remotely better that isn’t the status quo, then by all means. I am all ears. I truly am. Until then, all you essentially keep saying is “no” and that’s about as helpful as the people saying “TP Barons are evil”
I mean, I don’t know what else to suggest personally, consider any other option is going to be met with “No”. This is the one idea I could think up that hurts nobody, not even ANet, because gems to gold would still be perfectly viable, and gem store items could still only be obtained through either money, or gold to gems, which most activities that my suggestion effects, hardly pay out gold anyway.
Gene, some stuff i already explained in my prior post, while you were writing this one, so i snipped out your answers to it.
Personally i cant think of anything better that is the status quo because by now you know that i think there is nothing wrong with the status quo. I am aware that it looks biased coming out of my fingertips but I can honestly tell you that my doing on the TP doesnt influence it in a bad way due to its sheer magnitude. I tried manipulating markets in the past but what i essentially did was spreading my invested gold to other players and acting as a gold sink.
As a “rich” player I also dont neccessarily consume more goods than the average player.
I only have 1 set of ascended armor/trinkets/weapons, 1 Leggie and i use mostly account bound skins that I earned myself through achievements. The only valuable skins I use are 2 from the Black Lion Weapons Specialist and a deathly bull pauldron skin that i bought for a couple of gold. I only play 1 character.
All that stuff i could have easily farmed in 19 months without making any profit on the tp.
As JS already mentioned, try to focus on proving that there actually is a problem before discussing your solution because at this point, it only frustrates you.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Because gold is still an option and as long as it is, i will be able to earn more on the tp than you and buy stuff at a faster pace.
But I don’t care how fast your pace is so long as my pace isn’t horribly slow by comparison. If you can attain something in a day, I don’t care so long as I can attain that same item in the same quantity in three or even five days. Just so long as it’s not weeks compared to your single day.
You’re looking at this like it still needs to be a competition, which is not what my suggestion sets out to do. It doesn’t even set out to make everything 1:1 equal. It just sets out to equalize as much as possible so that people can still feel rewarded despite not making gold, and get the things they want.
Even if things aren’t completely equal, more equilibrium is still better than less.
As you stated that making gold on the tp is easy and takes no time investment,
I’ve never stated that there is no time investment. I’m not sure I even stated making gold on the tp is easy. I’m fairly certain I haven’t stated either, at least. But I can’t even remember, so whatever.
I know I have stated that TP players are capable of making far more gold than someone spending the same amount of time doing something, and I’m fairly certain you agreed with that assessment at least.
why wouldnt i be able to play 90 minutes regular gameplay, earn enough account bound currency to get 18 t6 mats from it, then play the TP for 30 min and be able to buy 25 more from my profits?
And so what if you do? As long as the method I choose still allows a steady pace, I don’t care that your pace is faster. I only care that my pace is actually steady and timely and not “zomg forever” compared to yours. Again, if yours is one day, I’m happy so long as mine is no more than three or five days.
Or i just play the tp for 2 hours and buy 100 t6 mats from my profits.
Then do that if it’s what you prefer. All I’m trying to do is create more options.
You still lose.
How do I lose when my goal was to get the items I want in a timely manner?
I think we should focus again on the task at hand, to identify and prove that rich players influence the game in a bad way before discussing possible solutions or reward schemes in general. I will link some posts of JS again in which he tried to steer the discussion in the right direction and stated his opinion on the matter:
It’s possible I’ve missed it and I apologize if that’s true, but I haven’t seen any evidence or even a correct hypothesis that a group of the rich can negatively effect your gameplay experience. I think a clear set of ideas would help me understand and respond to the issue.
P.S. Don’t say luxury goods or I will refer you to the first rule of the tautology club.
This is spiraling. Let’s stop discussing possible “solutions”. Before discussing a solution you must first prove a problem. I have yet to see any evidence internally or externally that there is a problem.
Speculation on player wealth is not evidence of a problem.
An anecdote is not evidence unless it demonstrates a systemic problem.
Flippers increase liquidity and bring prices closer to equilibrium, almost always lowering prices and providing preferences to other players. I see no reason why anyone would want to stop that.
This is the kind of post I mean when I say evidence. I don’t require numbers I require a coherent idea that makes sense in this setting. If I think it’s valid I’ll be researching it myself (assuming I haven’t already).
This one I have researched though. My response is a couple of points:
1. MMOs have homogeneous good, this means there’s no differentiation from your item from someone else’s copy of that same item. This comes into play because it rules out quality control/competition.
2. I know you said it already, but I’ll restate, that prices of high end goods aren’t being controlled.
3. The prices of high end goods are VERY close, if not exactly the same, to what they would be without any “TP Barons” wanting those items. There’s too much velocity for individual rich people to influence the supply/demand equation all that much, which is the only control they have if they aren’t manipulating prices.
Feel free to make assumptions as you go, fork the ideas as if drawing a decision tree. This is how I would recommend beginning the analysis with or without data.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
It doesn’t matter, that is not an option for Anet.
It absolutely is an option for ANet.
As it is now, casual players who have cash to spend but not a lot of time to play the game can buy gems and convert them to gold, and use this to supplement their limited ability to play by buying crafting mats, gear, etc. and get most of the things in the game when they want them.
Hardcore players with a lot of time to play the game but not much cash to spend can grind for mats, gear and gold, and convert gold to gems to buy anything they want from the cash shop.
This is how they set up the game, and this is intentional. Your proposal throws this out the window, giving hardcore players an advantage because now they can obtain more things through playing the game than casual players can by buying gems.
Hardcore players already have an advantage. If anything, this helps casual players because they take two hours doing a karma run if that’s what they like (and all the time they have), and they will actually be able to buy insert skin here with said karma.
This is bad for the game and bad for Anet’s profits, because it discourages people from buying gems.
The most it would discourage is that less casual players might turn gems into gold if they decide they don’t have to have the ultimate instant gratification that gems to gold offers. This doesn’t mean everyone would suddenly stop getting gems with money though.
That aside, you can’t honestly tell me you think it’s a healthy business model to limit options so that players feel that turning gems to gold is their only option?
Personally i cant think of anything better that is the status quo because by now you know that i think there is nothing wrong with the status quo.
Then there was never any point in discussing anything, or in me ever suggesting anything, because it’s impossible to come to any common ground. I wasted my time even ever bothering with a suggestion, so, thanks for that.
(edited by Gene Archer.8560)
The most it would discourage is that less casual players might turn gems into gold if they decide they don’t have to have the ultimate instant gratification that gems to gold offers. This doesn’t mean everyone would suddenly stop getting gems with money though.
It does indicate that Anet is likely to sell less gems for actual, real-world cash however. Why would they want to reduce their profits?
That aside, you can’t honestly tell me you think it’s a healthy business model to limit options so that players feel that turning gems to gold is their only option?
It’s not their only option, playing the game is also an option.
Again, my point is that you have not even shown there is a problem to solve, and that the proposed solution actually makes things worse for Anet and for players. I’m not going to waste any more time on it. As Wanze posted above, before discussing possible solutions you will need to offer convincing evidence that there is a problem to solve.
As it stands, I see the game set up by Anet to do certain things, and offer certain choices to players. The game appears to be working as intended, there are a lot of people enjoying the game, and Anet is making money. Please show me, not tell me, exactly what the problem is.
(edited by tolunart.2095)
All the other currencies in the game are not tradable between players. The goods those currencies buy are not tradable between players. Now the items bought can be converted through crafting, forging and salvaging into items that can be traded for gold, gold that at one point was injected into the game game. Gold is the primary currency in game to use vendors, armor repair (soon going away), waypoint usage and is the medium of exchange on the TP.
Now this circles round to the TP. Gold isn’t the only thing that’s injected into the game, items are as well. While some are useful if you are starting out, many are not, they clog up your player’s inventory and need to be disposed of quickly. You could delete them but how often would you simply throw away something if you could get a bit of money for it? That means either seeing a vendor in the field for a handful of copper or using the TP from anywhere to earn more buy selling those items to people looking to buy them.
So the question becomes Gene, what currency would you like on the TP if not gold? Because an intermediary form of value is required otherwise we will be reduced to bartering. Or are you advocating the removal of all player trading and only allow vendor buying for the pocket change we need? That means craftsmen can only craft items for themselves with mats they find themselves.
Now I’m sure Gene that you aren’t advocating the removal of the TP but unless you let sellers choose the currency they are looking to accept, maybe even several choices (X gold or Y karma or Z badges), one of the currencies has to be the official one for trade. And this still doesn’t alter the problem you are advocating to solve which is similar rewards for different activities.
All the devs can do is assign rewards that inject goods and coin into the economy based on content. What they can’t do is adjust rewards that come from players taking those goods and coin and accumulate coin given from other players while a portion is successfully destroyed.
See there is nothing wrong with the TP. It’s purpose is to allow a secure place to buy on sell goods between players while destroying a bit of the gold, which is 100% injected into the game as rewards. It does it’s job admirably. Nobody complains they got ripped off by another player for not delivering the item or gold.
What’s “wrong” is how the bulk of the players use it. If more were willing to wait for an item to sell or wait for someone to sell you an item for the price you are willing to pay then the opportunity to act as the middleman and make a little money on each sale simply won’t exist. But players aren’t willing to leave items on the TP. Maybe previous games they played had time limits or maybe they are afraid that a system crash at ANet would cause them to loose the item. Instead they are willing to trade a little bit of their potential profit or savings for immediacy. They aren’t duping players into accepting less or paying more. Every person goes into the TP and sees the trading range and those that sell to the highest buyer or buy from the lowest seller choose immediacy. You can’t fix that while maintaining the usefulness that the TP provides everyone else.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Again, my point is that you have not even shown there is a problem to solve,
How do I prove to you that “Not everyone is able to make enough gold to keep up with inflation to be able to afford the things they want playing certain aspects of the game and with certain time limits and that makes the game less fun”?
What about “BiS gear is far more difficult to obtain than it should be” And then I bring up the dev response that mentions BiS gear being obtainable even by casuals by level 80. I believe it was a Colin quote. Will that quote mean anything to you if I dig it up?
Is finding all the posts stating things like this enough? Do you want a graph from me? Does anecdotal evidence count for anything considering I can’t possibly poll the entire playerbase? Do I need the entire playerbase to be in agreement? Can I use one of your own posts where you state that there are people who don’t have time and that’s one of the reasons for gems to gold?
You say to show you that there is a problem, but you have to actually be open to the idea that what I’m showing you could be seen as a problem, and it’s more than apparent that none of you are even willing to entertain the idea.
So the question becomes Gene, what currency would you like on the TP if not gold?
I don’t want a currency aside from gold on the TP. That was the whole point of my sug-
Forget it. Just forget it. Whatever, man. Just whatever.
I see you’ve found how welcoming the tp section is…………….lol. I hope the CDI for the TP is not here for the sake of it being constructive.
Serenity now~Insanity later
I see you’ve found how welcoming the tp section is…………….lol. I hope the CDI for the TP is not here for the sake of it being constructive.
Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude.
Not at all helping the situation.
Again, my point is that you have not even shown there is a problem to solve,
How do I prove to you that “Not everyone is able to make enough gold to keep up with inflation to be able to afford the things they want playing certain aspects of the game and with certain time limits and that makes the game less fun”?
.
That’ll I can agree with. If we ever get access to some hard data, we’ll be in a much better place to say the least.
Please explain to me what your process would be for proving your theories if you had the data.
Start by seeing if there was a wealth gap, how large if present, and if it was growing. Then I could go from there.
This does not answer my question. Feel free to make assumptions as you go, fork the ideas as if drawing a decision tree. This is how I would recommend beginning the analysis with or without data.
What about “BiS gear is far more difficult to obtain than it should be” And then I bring up the dev response that mentions BiS gear being obtainable even by casuals by level 80. I believe it was a Colin quote. Will that quote mean anything to you if I dig it up?.
Years ago I was in a relationship and told a woman I loved her. Months later, we broke up. But because I said it years ago, that means I still love her, right?
Things change. Ascended gear was created as a long-term project and players are not supposed to instantly obtain it. They changed their minds, in response to players concerned that there is not enough “endgame” activity. It’s not surprising.
This is a you problem, not a game problem. The game is fine, and JS has already said that the way the TP works is intended and working well for what it was designed to do. That you don’t like the way it works is an opinion, not a fact. Others may agree with you, or disagree, or not care either way. Most players don’t care either way, as long as they can exchange stuff they don’t need for gold.
(edited by tolunart.2095)
My suggestion is trying to solve the problem where people, depending on the activities they find fun, cannot also be rewarded and get the things they want while having said fun.
My suggestion is trying to make it so people can do whatever they want, not hurt other people in the process, and get whatever items they desire by doing those activities, without cutting into ANet profits -or- the TP players potential profits.
To raise other currencies up to the level of gold in terms of how flexible they are as currencies, so everyone can obtain whatever they want in game with the skills they’re good at.
I don’t know if we’ll be able to see eye to eye on it.
In regards to fun and rewards, I believe this to be too subjective to actually be able to determine whether there is an issue. I do not have fun in dungeons, ever. There is a lot of people that absolutely love dungeons. People spend time running them solo and then try to beat their fastest time. That, to me, is crazy, but they seem to enjoy doing it. Rewards are also very subjective. One person will love a weapon/skin and another will absolutely hate it. The Ghastly Grinning Shield Skin is absolutely ugly to me, and yet, it is priced higher than every precursor.
I would prefer that there should be more avenues for accumulating these other types of currencies, like dungeon tokens or karma than through the current methods. I do not think devaluing them by offering every in-game item is the right way to go. I believe that the reward tracks in PvP is a good example of this and how it can benefit players by providing options without devaluing any current currency. I think by increasing the methods of obtaining currency is a better way to provide more options to players to play how they want without making all currencies equal, at which point multiple currencies would be redundant.
I’m not sure any discussion or brain-storming of ideas is beneficial if everyone in the group sees eye-to-eye. Even if this isn’t possible, at least we can try to achieve a better understanding of why the perception differs.
I think we should focus again on the task at hand..
I will start by summarizing my point of view:
I dont actually think there is a problem.
As I am someone who makes lots of profit on the tp, i dont see how i hurt the economy in general. No matter how much gold i make, I wont be able to influence markets because my individual wealth is miniscule compared to the combined wealth of the general player base. Their supply and demand defines the current price and i am only able to gain profit by accurately predicting market shifts, as i cant shift a market on my own. People, who claim otherwise usually have a huge misconception of the magnitude of the economy and its participants in general.
I also dont consume significantly more goods than any other player because i have more gold at my disposal, I would even argue that i am in the lower half of consumers.
Some people argued that they think its unfair that I can make so much more gold per day than them doing their favourite activity, which enables me to buy desired items at a faster pace. I think thats a fair arguement put i yet have to see some proof that the disparity is actually so high.
Gold gain in pve is actually easily measured and easier to balance by Anet, while profit on the tp is hard to measure and hard to balance.
Time investment: The time you spend doing certain activities in pve is easily measured, be it a daily dungeon run cycle or 50 rounds on the champ train. But its hard to actually measure the time you actually spend playing the tp because its an ongoing process. If I would just measure the time i spend clicking on the TP interface, altering items (salvage, craft, consume containers, forge etc) , and sorting my storage, my time investment will be very small compared to the profits I expect. But as my ability to make profit rises with my ability to predict market trends, the actual time investment I have to spend on research is actually way higher because its ongoing with an everchanging market. People have to invest offline time as well in order to optimize their gold gain in pve but most of the time, detailed guides are already available online and once learned, the playing field never changes.
Projected profits: In pve, profit per time is actually easily measured, you add the gold rewards you earn for the activities you do and the value of the loot items you get.
But i simply cant tell you how much profit i actually make on the tp because its too complicated. First of all due to the amount of stuff i trade. I cant keep track off it. Even if I had Johns Tools at my disposal, i doubt that i could measure how much profit i make via the tp because i think it will be hard to distinguish which profits came from trading items and which came from loot drops that i got. I have seen alot of figures being thrown in this topic (and I have thrown alot back) on how much more profitable the tp is compared to regular game rewards. But if I cant possibly calculate my profits/hour playing the tp and i doubt even Anet can identify it, how can people that claim that i make too much profit prove it?
So i encourage players to make suggestions on how to effectively measure profit on the TP, assuming you had Anets tools at your disposal.
I have no doubt that playing the tp is more profitable than other farming activities, i wont deny that but i would say, on average, its far less than some people claim it to be.
Then i think you also have to consider some other factors:
- Playing the TP has far more risk than other methods, there is no denying it. No profit is guaranteed and it also takes alot more initial investment than other methods.
- Playing the TP doesnt reward any other currencies or account bound rewards, which are needed to obtain most demanded items. So in return, those currencies, account bound mats or meta achievement rewards should be added as value towards other pve farms, which helps to push the perceived disparity between those 2 activities closer together.
- Playing the TP is not restricted by anything so everybody has the chance to do it.
continued
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Do i think that the mayority of the player base thinks its unfair that i make more gold per day than them?
No, i think most of them dont care. All my profits are based on other peoples decisions. Everytime they fill a buy order of mine or buy one of my listings, they cast a conscious vote that they value their instant gratification of gold return for their item or instant posession of my item more than it bothers them that i make more profit.
Its impossible for Anet to balance human behaviour, so for those that disapprove of the concept that its possible to make high profits on the tp, their best approach would be to only use buy offers to get their items and use sell listings to sell their items. If the mayority of the player base really thinks that tp profits should be nerfed and they start doing it, profit margins for tp players will automatically diminish.
But for 20 months i didnt see that happening so i have to assume that the mayority of the playerbase is indifferent to this “problem”.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
@Gene Archer
I’ve looked over all your posts in this thread and I can’t find the point you are trying to make. The closest I can find is you are discouraged that the rewards from the game are so meager and how it’s “unfair” that acting as a middle man on the TP can earn more than standard game play. Is that the gist of it?
If it is it’s like I said, the devs can control what the game creates out of nothing as a reward but they can’t prevent players from freely giving a small amount of money to someone who is acting as a middle man on the TP. The TP does what it’s suppose to do, the fault is with how players choose to use it that let the middle men prosper.
It’s no different as to how used game or car shops work.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
I rarely have more than 10g on hand before i log out at night because i use it all to place buy orders for items i trade with.
And i also usually dont have more than 200-500g when i log in the next day, collected my profits and cancelled all my buy orders.With those numbers, i might be in the top 50%, depending on the time of day but how would you value all my other assets?
Yeah, that’s why an asset tax would be tricky to implement. It would need to be some form of income tax. Still, if you have hundreds of gold in items on the market, a system that taxes you whenever you withdraw money would take care of those just fine. The only tricky bit would be if they tried to come after items in your own inventory/bank.
They correctly identified that a good low risk investment with a good return would be to buy cheap dyes for alts , this is something that would happen with or without a TP , it happens in every MMO where it’s known that something will become useful or valuable before an update.
Perhaps, but the nature of the TP allows for high volumes of the items to change hands in hours, if not minutes. Without it, the average player would have much more time to benefit from the difference. If people want to farm a given material and hold on to it in advance of a patch, hoping to sell it off for more later, that’s one thing, but to clear out the stocks of an item at a low price just so that they can sell it off later for a higher one, that’s something else entirely.
This is why you need to take into account “Skill” and having activities reward more/ uniquely reward the more “skill” they require. I know people are being coy and pretending that you can’t define it but at a base level it’s where you can do something (intentionally possible within the game) to a standard/level that is above at the very least the majority of players. Or in a pass fail situation you can successfully accomplish something where the majority of players would fail.
Yeah, maybe. And I’m not arguing that skill shouldn’t result in a difference in income rates, but a difference in skill at economics should not be tens or hundreds of times more valuable than skill at other significant ingame activities. This is not a purely economic simulator game, or even primarily an economic simulator game, so economic skills should not be the most valuable skills to have by such a significant margin. Players who are good at hitting things with swords should be far more rewarded than players who are good at juggling money.
Limiting purchasing based on quantity says “kitten you” to anyone crafting ascended armor/weapons or leveling a craft. Limiting turnaround time on sales says “kitten you” to anyone who bought too much of a resource and is attempting to sell back their surplus. Increasing sales tax says “kitten you” to players just selling things they loot and craft to make money, and “kitten you” to people buying stuff off the TP because sellers are passing off that tax onto buyers.
What about a Bind on Purchase and a progressive income tax that scales up when you collect from the TP and scales down slowly over time (so that most players would barely notice it)?
Actually, there is a problem, but it’s not with the game or mechanics of the Trading Post. The problem is with players who feel they deserve everything for nothing.
I agree, and that’s what we’re trying to reduce by somehow tackling the problem of people making obscene amounts of profits off the TP, which so far you haven’t been particularly helpful about.
My thoughts on equivalent effort for equivalent reward. If you can show that doing speed runs of dungeons or champ trains or any other mindless activities for getting gold in PvE is equal to the amount of effort that is used to determine which sigils I should buy for the new patch to make a profit, then we can talk.
I haven’t seen anyone defending speed runs and champ trains as being ideal either, and in the past these and other activities have been nerfed, but the TP hasn’t. I wouldn’t object to those sorts of PvE profit models being nerfed, I don’t use any of them myself, but whether they are nerfed or not, the TP still needs to get fixed. Two wrongs don’t justify a third.
Continued. . .
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
But I think the reason why all your arguments are fundamentally flawed, is because you think making profit on the TP is a “reward”. Doing a Jumping Puzzle for the end chest is a reward. Claiming Stone Mist and getting WXP and Dragonite is a reward. You complete tasks to get something back from the game.
Being smart and knowing what to buy and sell on a market is business. The game doesn’t reward you for playing the TP. The individual player controls how much money they can make or lose. It’s not like Evon gives me Karma and XP each time I make a sale.
“Reward” is any time in life in which you do something and get more back than you put in, regardless of how you did it. If you receive something, you have been rewarded. Semantics will earn you nothing.
1. Playing the TP is relatively risk-free, doesn’t take much time, and yet yields lots and lots of free gold.
2. There are lots and lots of poor and desperate people in the game who can’t afford to buy basic itemsMy question is, why don’t the poor people in the game just play the TP whenever they run low on gold then? Nobody could answer that.
I answered it several times. It’s only easy if you know how to do it and have the specific skills for it. Not everyone can do it, and of those that can, not everyone wants to. Players should not HAVE to do any specific activity, be that the TP or Champ farming or whatever, to see those same returns. In a game with many different things you can do, many of those things should offer comparable rewards/time.
My conclusion: There are not that many poor people in the game. Most of the people who complain here are complaining about the price of luxury items like having multiple legendaries, instead of basic items.
And most of the people who complain here are very up front about that, myself included, but the price of luxury items is not in the least bit irrelevant to the discussion. The average player has as much right to be able to purchase luxury goods as TP farmers do.
As for me, yes, mostly what I do is click a few buttons and look at some charts in the morning, do some buying, do some selling, do some crafting. Little effort in my part and I gain a couple extra gold every day. I’ve become busy lately and haven’t had a lot of time to do some research and thinking about how to expand the amount of gold I make per day. So as of right now I’m sure there are plenty of PvE farmers who make more gold than I do a day so maybe I’m not the best example. However that is not so say little effort was put in. It took me a lot of time and gold (as initial investment and the cost of experimentation) to figure out what items are popular but aren’t be supplied enough, how much can I buy with the amount of gold I currently have, what’s the best way to get these items out of all the sources listed, how many can I sell during the night, is the profit margin large enough to justify doing this, are there better items to focus on, etc. etc.
Yes, you put in some effort to learn to play. Kudos, really. But anyone who’s farming Frostgorge Sound also put in a lot of effort, getting their character to 80, learning how to use them effectively in combat, learning the routes, they put in effort too, even if it is one of the simplest ways to play the game, it took at least some effort.
It’s not that TP Farming takes zero effort, so proving that it takes at least a little effort does not mean anything, the problem is that it does not take so much more effort than other activities that it deserves to make so much more profit. And again, nobody is saying that you should unilaterally disarm and just stop using the TP to make profits, we’re suggesting ways that they could nerf that profit potential for everyone, and if they do so, it would be no more unwarranted than the numerous changes they’ve made to nerf profit potential in other PvE aspects of the game.
Continued. . .
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
The penalties are either a few silver for armor repairs (edit: which I just remembered are gone in a few days), or lost time if someone leaves or you get kicked. But you would never loose out on the 1-2g you get for completing the path. When playing with investments, the bigger your potential reward, the bigger your chances of losing money, and losing A LOT of money. The only time you would lose out a few silver here and there in the TP is by expecting less than a 1g profit.
I would be willing to take on more risk in PvE activities if we were talking TP-level rewards for success. I mean, maybe they could have some sort of buff, like +400% MF and Gold Find but it costs 1g per dose. If you don’t perform well then you could lose that money, but if you do well you could come out 5-10g ahead on each event. The only problem there is that the profits would tend to be dependent more on the other players around you than personal skill, so it wouldn’t be a catch-all, but it might be a nice idea.
So the student who studied medicine to become an RN should receive the same pay as someone who studied medicine to become a doctor?
In a game? Yes.
Should there be a wealth gap from someone who plays 1-2 hours a week vs someone who plays 4-6 hrs a day? there will be wealth gaps that have nothing to do with tp.
Sure, but effort should result in reward, the one who plays 4-6 hours per day should make more than the one doing 1-2 hours, and everyone should expect that. Why do you keep raising strawmen? You’re worse than Rani.
But in the end I wonder if this is the game for someone if their goal is the coolest stuff in a timely manner. Not that there is anything wrong with that but there are much better options of MMO if that is your goal.
I’ve been playing for about nine months now, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to believe I deserve at least one Legendary by now. And I could have easily afforded one at 2012 prices, but as I’ve made money, TP farmers have made money faster and the price has gone well up since then. Nobody is talking about a system in which a player could just start the game, goof around for a month or two and be able to afford a legendary through casual gameplay, unless he spends that time on the TP, of course.
If you compare a country based on Capitalism, and one that’s based on Communism, you’ll notice that one is prosperous and one isn’t. It would be similar to what some are advocating for here.
That’s true. Some communist countries like China are way more prosperous than Capitalist countries like Mexico (or the US, for that matter). Really though, it doesn’t much matter which system you use, what matters is the individuals involved and how it’s balanced out.
You’re not taking my wealth away, you’re devaluing it by sharing the payouts I make with everyone else in this game. Assuming equal effort, your idea is that with my 100 Gold made within 5 minutes, the person who spent the same effort and time harvesting Omnom nodes should get 100 Gold too.
Yup, but more realistically you just shouldn’t be able to make 100 gold in five minutes, or at least not be able to pocket those profits.
Anytime a TP player uses the TP to make a transaction, 15% of the coin used is destroyed. So yes, they’re very important to the health of the value of Gold.
Maybe, at the moment, though if that gold sink stopped working well enough, they could employ other methods.
I think we should focus again on the task at hand, to identify and prove that rich players influence the game in a bad way before discussing possible solutions or reward schemes in general
Why does that matter? It’s unimportant whether rich players “influence” the game or not. What matters is that they can more easily pick up items that take other players far more time and effort, it breaks the social contract that the game functions under, that by playing and having fun one can earn the cool rewards the game has to offer, and that anyone who does have more of those rewards than you do has been playing harder than you have. Players who have more rewards than you do for less time and effort are typically viewed as exploiting, and if the developers are seen to condone this sort of behavior, then they are not viewed as trustworthy brokers either.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
It’s not that TP Farming takes zero effort, so proving that it takes at least a little effort does not mean anything, the problem is that it does not take so much more effort than other activities that it deserves to make so much more profit. And again, nobody is saying that you should unilaterally disarm and just stop using the TP to make profits, we’re suggesting ways that they could nerf that profit potential for everyone, and if they do so, it would be no more unwarranted than the numerous changes they’ve made to nerf profit potential in other PvE aspects of the game.
Continued. . .
This is the heart of the problem. It’s your opinion that players don’t deserve to make “so much more.” But that is a function of how the TP was designed to work, they just happen to be patient, persistent and smart enough to learn how to use it.
Someone who works in a factory putting two parts of a product together might make, what, $15 an hour? $20? Someone who buys and sells real estate can make a deal over the phone while sitting in the office drinking his morning coffee and make a $100,000 profit during the same hour.
What you are saying is that the government (Anet in the game) should bust into his office and take away $99,980 from the real estate mogul because he doesn’t “deserve” to have it.
That’s just not going to happen.