Guild Wars 2

Essence Snow.3194:

1. Anet themselves acknowledge there is an issue with players having a sense of “poor rewards”. It is why they are revamping rewards in an ongoing effort. The design of the TP has a major impact on the reward structure of this game (I dare say the single most significant impact).

1. What can we easily change about it that has a significant impact on player perspective yet does not significantly impact the fundamental purpose of the TP?

We reduce the disparity between the haves (small % of players) to increase the have nots’ sense of reward by comparison from what it currently is, which again is acknowledged to be lacking.

1. I wont deny that Anet acknowledged that an issue exists for players having a poor sense of rewards and the rewards revamp with the feature patch is a result of it. But how does the TP have the single most impact on rewards, when it can only be considered a source of profit, not reward? Possible profit margins on the TP dont have a place in a discussion about reward structures of the game because they cant be classified as a reward.

1. You dont answer your own question with your 2nd sentence. How do you reduce the disparity? It might be that i interpret your statement wrong but Anet never acknowledged the profit disparity on the tp is a problem, its actually the opposite:
   Until now, there are no internal or external indications that this disparity influences the economy or individual game experience in any significant way.

Essence Snow.3194:

Anet acknowledging that rewards (which are vital to mmorpgs) are poor is more proof that there is a problem, then proof of there not being a problem.

Ergo there is more “proof” of a problem than there is “proof” of no problem.

You have not shown there is not a problem.

You cannot prove a negative.

They have been working on loot drops for over a year now. The function of the TP has not changed. It is working as intended, as shown by the fact that they have not changed the way it works since launch.

If it didn’t already work as intended, they would have changed it.

Any limitations placed on the TP would simply be worked around by a flipper having multiple accounts.

Essence Snow.3194:

Anet acknowledging that rewards (which are vital to mmorpgs) are poor is more proof that there is a problem, then proof of there not being a problem.

Ergo there is more “proof” of a problem than there is “proof” of no problem.

You have not shown there is not a problem.

Can you actually provide a link where they acknowledge this? As i said, i dont deny that they did it but would like to see their actual wording of it. I am especially interested in any statement concerning the Trading Post being a source of rewards.

Concerning your statement in the other post that a poor sense of rewards in the past has resulted in players leaving the came, I think i found a good way to find out. I actually dont think that its such a big factor in players leaving the game, especially the disparity in profit margins on the tp being a factor.
How can we actually establish who is right?

Anet sends an email to inactive account users that havent logged in for 3/6/9/12/15 months with a little questionaire of reasons, like:
- not enough time to play
- didnt like the gameplay
- too unbalanced
- interest shifted to other games
- rewards in general were poor
- RNG sucked
- no mounts
- didnt like wvw
- didnt like pvp
- possible profit margins on the tp

As an incentive to fill out the questionaire (and possibly return ot GW2), they could offer a gem gift of x amount, if they will log back in.

Its possible that Anet has already done that in the past and so got reasonable data on why people left the game.

But as I said, i dont think they ever acknowledged that potentially profit margins for individual players edit have any impact whatsoever on other players.

If you think thats wrong, please provide a link.

Edit: removed a “dont” where it was not intended

munkiman.3068:

The problem: The earning potential for flipping goods on the TP is higher than any other activity. Anyone that takes some time to investigate it can see it for themselves.

That ‘problem’ is balanced by the risks involved with selling on the TP. The losing potential for flipping goods on the TP is higher than any other activity as well.

Wanze.8410:

1. I wont deny that Anet acknowledged that an issue exists for players having a poor sense of rewards and the rewards revamp with the feature patch is a result of it. But how does the TP have the single most impact on rewards, when it can only be considered a source of profit, not reward? Possible profit margins on the TP dont have a place in a discussion about reward structures of the game because they cant be classified as a reward.

1. You dont answer your own question with your 2nd sentence. How do you reduce the disparity? It might be that i interpret your statement wrong but Anet never acknowledged the profit disparity on the tp is a problem, its actually the opposite:
   Until now, there are no internal or external indications that this disparity influences the economy or individual game experience in any significant way.

1) The amount of rewards rewarded (bahhh wish I had a better word there so I wasn’t doubling up on that) is impact by the trading post being a global economy. They are impacted to not flood the economy with items (which would reduce value) or coin (which would cause unacceptable inflation). Part of having the TP the core of the game’s global economy is having a reward structure that revolves around conversion to coin and vice versa as an attempt to sidestep the negative effects of RNG and an individuals’ allotted rewards (which are balanced on a global scale directly via DR, percentages, set rewards, difficulty, the fore mentioned rng, etc etc….). This maintains that coin is fundamentally intertwined with reward in GW2, which makes the two synonymous.

1) a)My personal proposition as you know is a progressive tax. One that would not completely “nerf” playing the tp, but would have a two pronged effect. i) Bring potential more inline with other avenues (which aides in the perceived fairness of the game) ii) sink more gold (which gives more leeway for reward allocation) A checks and balance system, where the trading checks the economy and the tax balances the trading.

b) i)Anet would not want to admit that a disparity is a problem. That would openly welcome themselves to unwanted response. So it is no surprise that this would not happen. ii) Historically, (our best predictors of future occurrences) disparities have shown they do influence people rather significantly.

Essence Snow.3194:

1) a)My personal proposition as you know is a progressive tax. One that would not completely “nerf” playing the tp, but would have a two pronged effect. i) Bring potential more inline with other avenues (which aides in the perceived fairness of the game) ii) sink more gold (which gives more leeway for reward allocation)

b) i)Anet would not want to admit that a disparity is a problem. That would openly welcome the floodgates to unwanted response. So it is no surprise that this would not happen. ii) Historically, (our best predictors of future occurrences) disparities have shown they do influence people rather significantly.

1. For the most part, i even agree with you: Some kind of progressive tax seems to be the best and propably easiest solution for me, even though I (and you) dont know how this could easily be implemented without greatly impacting the functionality of the TP. But again, i dont think we established yet that a problem actually exists.

Personally i think its proven internally (by Johns statements here) and externally (by the non existance of posts proving otherwise) that players´ profit disparity on the TP influences the economy in any negative way for the general player base. It doesnt matter, if people like me or you exist or not, their road to their rewards is not impacted by our existance, as long as they dont change their way of gameplay or Anet changes their way of gameplay. I hope you can agree to that and acknowledge that real quick as a base for future discussion. Now
So the only way, players are negatively impacted by our existance as tp players, is their perceived lack of rewards compared to ours (for discussions sake, i will see our profits as rewards for now). Now we have to establish, if this negative impact is in fact so great that it threatens the population of the game (and with that its success) because players leave the game because of it, warranting an overhaul of the Trading Post.
I think my proposal of the questionaire for inactive players would be a good way to find out, if thats the case. And i dont believe that profit disparity on the tp actually has a high enough impact to outweigh the negatives any change of the tp would bring.

b) i) I disagree. I think Anet improved their communication with the community alot in the last 3 months and the changes we are about to see with the feature patch, are a direct result of it. They also made their fair share of unpopular changes, so they have proven that they dont fear negative response but use it to change the game for the better. From a business point of view it also wouldnt make sense to not change something, even though they know it causes a mass exodus of players.
ii) I think you try to use real life economics again to prove a point inside a game economy, which is invalid. Historically would mean, in the history of GW2…

After reading through the thread I’d like us to calmly take a step back and consider a graphic that clearly shows the whole Trading Post in-game issue.

Wanze.8410:

simply quoting to let you know I am responding to you

Tbh idk if there has to be a negative to act in a positive fashion. Making something better imo is justification enough for change regardless of coming from a negative or not…..ie always striving to improve for the sake of betterment

My assumption about the information of the disparity stems from the lack of information now to which we were privied (idk how to spell that) before, where an equality of wealth distribution was touted as a good thing.

Essence Snow.3194:

Wanze.8410:

simply quoting to let you know I am responding to you

Tbh idk if there has to be a negative to act in a positive fashion. Making something better imo is justification enough for change regardless of coming from a negative or not…..ie always striving to improve for the sake of betterment

“Dont fix what isnt broken.”

If you cannot find a definitive problem, there is zero reason to “fix” what does not have a problem.

You hate cabbage. So now you go to a restaurant that sells cabbage dishes and say “We have a problem, because cabbage tastes bad.” The patrons at the restaurant disagree.

And that’s where we have a problem. You have no more basis for the claim “the patrons disagree” as we do to say that they all agree with us. You disagree, but you have no idea how many other players agree with you. ANet needs to be the ones to do a good survey of some kind that could measure the overall player feedback on this issue, but my bet would be that there are more of us than there are of you, just not necessarily deep in a thread on the trading post forum.

The correct response would be “we have a problem, some of our customers think cabbage tastes bad, we should see how many actually prefer cabbage, and if it turns out to be not that many, maybe we tone down the cabbage.”

If they look into the issue and it turns out that the majority of the players like things how they are, then sure, keep it that way, but I think there’s reason enough to actually look into the situation and get the data they’d need.

Who establishes their price on the tp?
Its the average player, John stated that multiple times in this topic. There is no indication whatsoever that the ultra rich are responsible for their high prices and their prices will be the same, if somehow, we manage to minimise potential profits for tp players.

But they set the prices based on what the rich can afford. I mean, if I got a precursor drop that I had no interest in using, I certainly wouldn’t sell it for 50g or whatever, because I know that someone would pay a few hundred for it and it would be idiotic of me to sell it for less than it’s worth, but if I knew that nobody had enough to be able to spend a few hundred on it, then I wouldn’t price it that high. The availability of wealth at the high end justifies high prices, without that availability, prices would be lower.

Ideally of course supplies would be well higher than they are today, which should decrease their prices if manipulation is not an issue.

Because it would result in less people playing the game. Right now, the prices of precursors (which are set by supply and demand of the general players base, unless you prove otherwise), make them a long term goal for people in pursuit of their Legendary.
This keeps them logging in frequently and participate in various aspects of the game, which is good for the overall population of the game.

Which is a dumb excuse for two reasons.

1. Plenty of people already have their Legendaries, and they keep playing. Every night I play alongside at least 2-5 people using Legendaries, and who knows what they have on other characters. If getting a Legendary was the “game over” screen, then plenty of players would already be gone.

2. As we’ve well established, “playing the game” is a terrible way to acquire a Legendary. If you want a Legendary, you farm the TP for it. There have been plenty of people who have had Legendaries for over a year now, and yet I’ve been playing nightly since launch and don’t have even one. Many of us have been arguing that they should reorganize rewards so that playing the game is the best way of earning money, but some people in this thread have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent that.

I agree with you on principle here, Legendaries should be an endgame goal that players strive for using their ingame activities, but that’s not how they currently work. If they removed all gold requirements for Legendaries and made them BoP then you would actually be making a very good point, but so long as you can just throw gold at the problem, there is no “for the love of the game” justification for it.

If Rewards for account bound Living Story Achievements are available for gold, there is less incentive for players to actually participate in the Living Story.

Meh. You think I played the LW content to get Scarlet’s Mask, which is currently taking up space in one of my bags? There are a handful of LW skins that I actually cared to get, but for the most part they just didn’t fit the characters I have and they end up taking up space. When it comes to LW content, my primary goal would be to get as many of the achievements as I’m capable of (even if there is no reward or I’ve already cleared it), and my secondary goal is to just have fun and experience it all. I cleared the Scarlet LW meta within a few days of the patch, yet I was running the Knight/Holo events every night, often several times per night. It was fun and offered solid standard rewards.

Unique skins are nice, but I don’t begrudge TPers having access to them any more than any other items in the game, and if giving up LW skins’ uniqueness meant easier access to the high-cost items I do want? I’d make that deal in a heartbeat.

Ask yourself this: As it seems you are in pursuit of Sunrise and think it takes too long for yourself to obtain it, would it result in a better game experience for you (and everybody else), if Anet made Sunrise purchaseable from a vendor for 10g basically resulting in every account to have one?

Yeah.

How does removing long term goals positively impact regular login patterns in the playerbase?

I dunno, I’m not there yet. Ask one of those people with two or more Legendaries that just keep playing.

For me, personally, I don’t really play to earn a Legendary, I’d like one very much, but if that was my only goal then I would be playing very differently from how I currently do because I know I’m not making money as efficiently as I could. I’s a goal I have, but it’s not the only goal.

I didn’t say anything about how hard/little they work, just that in the same hour one person can make a lot more money. You made the assumption that the real estate guy was lazy, why? What makes the factory worker work hard? Maybe he has an easy job, and the real estate guy spends twelve hours a day working on deals.

You were the one that said that the real estate guy was just sitting in his office drinking his coffee. If he has time to drink coffee then he has time to put some components together. Here’s the thing, I’ll grant you that the RE guy might be very hard working at it, and that the factory guy might be very lazy, fair enough, but it’s completely impossible for one human being to be 5000 times as lazy as any other, unless one of them is in a coma, I suppose. The RE guy might deserve to make more, but there’s no way his efforts could justify making 5000 times more.

That’s the real issue with income disparity, few people seriously want a 100% even reward system, where everyone gets the exact same compensation regardless of skill or effort. I don’t want that. All I want is for balance between the top and the bottom, that a reasonable amount of effort would produce rewards within spitting distance of the best possible rewards, not equal, but close enough to it.

most players want their item/coin now which presents an opportunity to those who are willing to provide these things immediately in order to make a profit later.

I still think this is a logical fallacy brought on by players not having enough information. I still believe that if you presented most players with the option “do you want 40s for your item now, or 50s for the item when you log in tomorrow?” Most players would be fine with the 50s tomorrow, but the current UI doesn’t educate them to this, and the average player does not have any idea how long it will take for placing a buy/sell order to fill, and at what price it’s a good idea to do so. It’s a system who rewards players that analyze those markets carefully, and punishes those who don’t, which I don’t believe is a fair difficulty curve for an adventure game to have.

If the TP earning potential was reduced, would it still be highest or would something else become higher? If the TP is still the highest, then there will always be this problem. If it becomes second or third highest, then there will be those that can’t earn maximum gold the same way as speed dungeon runners or gold through world boss events. This issue exists currently.

In an adventure game, it would be FAR better if the best way to earn money is via dungeons or other adventure content than that it be off of the TP, even for those players that choose not to run that kind of content. I never play Fractals, and will never play them until they make the time investment shorter, but I would still rather that Fractals be the best way to make money in the game than for the TP to be the best way, in a heartbeat. Of course for m personal preference, World Bosses would be the best way, since that’s what I most prefer, but I don’t expect or need that, so long as the returns are at least close to what the best way is.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Essence Snow.3194:

Wanze.8410:

simply quoting to let you know I am responding to you

Tbh idk if there has to be a negative to act in a positive fashion. Making something better imo is justification enough for change regardless of coming from a negative or not…..ie always striving to improve for the sake of betterment

“Dont fix what isnt broken.”

If you cannot find a definitive problem, there is zero reason to “fix” what does not have a problem.

There is a problem. not being able to identify your problem exactly just means you cant identify it, it doesnt mean it doesnt exist.

many many many people could put the
if i dont see a problem their aint a problem on their tombstones.

If player A makes 3 times the amount of gold on average per hour by playing the tp than player B by doing his favourite pve content, B feels he is rewarded less.
Now Anet finds the magic wand to nerf Player A´s rewards to a level that resembles PLayer B´s rewards per hour, giving B a fair sense of reward again, right?

But assuming that Player A´s rate of profit before the nerf didnt have any impact of prices in general (nobody was proven otherwise yet in this topic, dont know about PMs), nothing will chance on Player B´s financial situation or his road to his desired rewards.

And what about player C, who plays 3 times more per day than player B? He will also reach reward levels 3 times faster.

So if nerfing the possible profit margins on the TP wont change anything on player B´s situation, what incentive does Anet have to change it?

There have been plenty of studies on this. Increasing player B’s peception that the game is fair and that people are earning what they deserve WOULD improve player B’s experience, even if he doesn’t reach his desired rewards any sooner. Humans are programmed to want a fair deal, even if the personal outcomes are the same. I mean, if you’re playing a game of golf and the other guy just straight-up beats you, that may not be ideal, but you’ll still feel a lot better about the game than if he beats you by cheating constantly.

Player-to-player trading is common in MMOs, and this system was set up to work the way it does, and it does its job very efficiently. For example, the cross-server nature of the TP makes it impossible to make money the way I used to in Rift, by using that game’s weekly free server transfers:

Just because other games have economies that are easier to take advantage of than others, doesn’t mean that GW2’s economy couldn’t be doing better. I’m dabbling in ESO, for example (still prefer GW2), but their economy is a mess. I can do what you’re talking about on a single server, by being a part of two guilds, which have their own unconnected marketplaces, on which the same items are valued quite differently. It’s chaos and I’m sure people are making a fortune on it. I know ways I could be making fairly easy money on it if I wanted to spend more of my time in front of the bank than I do, but I’d rather play the game.

I’ve played a lot of MMOs, and GW2’s TP is the best one I’ve ever seen. Kudos for that. But it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be better still.

I wont deny that Anet acknowledged that an issue exists for players having a poor sense of rewards and the rewards revamp with the feature patch is a result of it. But how does the TP have the single most impact on rewards, when it can only be considered a source of profit, not reward? Possible profit margins on the TP dont have a place in a discussion about reward structures of the game because they cant be classified as a reward.

Profit IS reward! Stop trying to separate the two. So long as most of the items that drop for players can be bought for gold, you have to accept that gold is a part of the reward cycle, and being able to earn gold and buy things with it is a reward mechanism, whether the gold comes from a mob or from a player.

Any limitations placed on the TP would simply be worked around by a flipper having multiple accounts.

Maybe, but at least then they would have had to purchase multiple accounts, which at least puts a little extra money into ANet’s pockets. For one though, Bind on Purchase would not work with multiple accounts, since there would still be no way to transfer those items between accounts.

That ‘problem’ is balanced by the risks involved with selling on the TP. The losing potential for flipping goods on the TP is higher than any other activity as well.

Not if you have any idea what you’re doing and play reasonably conservatively. Sure, you can choose to take wild risks, but you can also make very low risk moves where at worst you’ll break even and you’re far more likely to make significant profits. Very rare is the situation where a relatively safe deal goes so far bust that you actually lose money on it, and if you make a large number of diverse moves, you may lose some, but win more and still come out ahead, which is not “risk,” any more than occasionally dying and having to WP during an event that rewards many times the WP cost is a “risk.”

phys.7689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Essence Snow.3194:

Wanze.8410:

simply quoting to let you know I am responding to you

Tbh idk if there has to be a negative to act in a positive fashion. Making something better imo is justification enough for change regardless of coming from a negative or not…..ie always striving to improve for the sake of betterment

“Dont fix what isnt broken.”

If you cannot find a definitive problem, there is zero reason to “fix” what does not have a problem.

There is a problem. not being able to identify your problem exactly just means you cant identify it, it doesnt mean it doesnt exist.

many many many people could put the
if i dont see a problem their aint a problem on their tombstones.

Then where is the proof of the problem? For that matter, there’s not even any substantial proof of the perceived problem in this thread.

phys.7689:

There is a problem.

No there isn’t, unless you mean the “problem” of people coming on here asking for nerfs without a single shred of evidence to show that those nerfs are warranted.

Southern.8973:

Any limitations placed on the TP would simply be worked around by a flipper having multiple accounts.

This is correct but, this method is already in use today. Thus, how much of JS’s data is skewed? When one looks at Legendary or Precursor transactions, how many of those unique players are actually the same physically person? That kind of data is not possible.

Is an incentive to buy another account a good thing? Would limiting a players capacity to earn gold off the TP be an incentive to spend real currency on gems? People keep asking for proof of wealth being a problem. Well, if a player keeps consuming the game and never reciprocates by spending real money, wouldn’t that a bad thing?

Along the lines of the “prove something is wrong” conversation, how do we know things couldn’t be better? There is no data to prove either sides opinion is correct or the best because it’s never been tested. Maybe neither side would actually be the best and a cycling of the two would work better?

I’m going to go with the age old idiom, “You never know until you try.”

I’ve seen comments about responsibility to the players. First and foremost above all things. Ncsoft is responsible to their shareholders. With that in mind. We should understand Anet will never do anything that will hurt their bottom line. Micro transactions are a very big thing.
As I’ve mentioned before. People having gold in game is imo what Anet wants people to feel they need. The more gold people need the better it is for them.

Just my opinion, I believe Anet likes it when in game items are high. Encourages either more play time to earn gold. Or more importantly real money purchases for lack of in game funds to have the higher end items we desire.

Do I think they dislike an imbalance of any kind in their game. Sure I think they would dislike it. Lack of balance makes for some unhappy costumers. End the end though, it is a business. Whatever will make them the most money is where they will and should go with their product.

imo, reducing the amount of gold players feel they need is reducing profit for them.

I’m no longer going to debate the issue as to who is right or wrong. everyone has a right to their opinion. This one is just mine.

Ohoni.6057:

Who establishes their price on the tp?
Its the average player, John stated that multiple times in this topic. There is no indication whatsoever that the ultra rich are responsible for their high prices and their prices will be the same, if somehow, we manage to minimise potential profits for tp players.

But they set the prices based on what the rich can afford. I mean, if I got a precursor drop that I had no interest in using, I certainly wouldn’t sell it for 50g or whatever, because I know that someone would pay a few hundred for it and it would be idiotic of me to sell it for less than it’s worth, but if I knew that nobody had enough to be able to spend a few hundred on it, then I wouldn’t price it that high. The availability of wealth at the high end justifies high prices, without that availability, prices would be lower.
Ideally of course supplies would be well higher than they are today, which should decrease their prices if manipulation is not an issue.

No, its not the rich, its the AVERAGE player, who pays those prices. The mayority of people i know that have legendaries, dont play the TP, some used gems though. If you cant or dont want to pay those prices, you seem to be below average in wealth distribution. Tough Luck.

And did you even think about what economic impact it would have, if the precursor droprate would be doubled? Of course it would lower the prices, people would get them for 500g, the next week for 400g and the next week for 300g. But it would also mean that doublre the amount of precursors will be crafted at the same time. Did you even consider, what impact that would have on t6 fine mats or ectos? Or silver doubloons and Lodestones? if you save 300g on your precursor, you will pay 500g more for those ressources because you have way more competitors scrambling for those ressources while their droprate hasnt been raised along with precursors.
Oh, just raise the droprate for those as well, you say?
I am sorry, you sound more and more like someone who doesnt get what he wants fast enough and that looks for someone to blame. You dont want to participate in farming for hours on end or playing the tp or buy gold with gems to get pricy rewards because other aspects of the game are more fun for you? Fair enough. But others do. If you get left behind, that your own choice.

If it bothers you so much that you dont enjoy the game anymore, make a goodbye topic in general discussions forum, everybody likes those, and uninstall the game.
If the fact that you cant get Sunrise as fast as you wanted doesnt really bother you that much to actually leave the game because you realize that you can enjoy all content perfectly fine without it, well, you just disapproved your own main “perceived” problem of the game.
You can keep arguing with us, which will lead to NO change of the status quo, or you can actually start to address what JS said on how to prove your point is valid.

Wanze.8410:

You can keep arguing with us, which will lead to NO change of the status quo, or you can actually start to address what JS said on how to prove your point is valid.

That’s the real problem – there is simply no way to prove what they claim to “feel” is wrong, because it’s nothing more than a feeling. If you don’t feel it too, you’re never going to consider it a problem.

So they just go round and round trying to obfuscate the issue until they end up with such a tangled knot of logic and emotion that no one knows what’s going on any more.

At this point, actually long before this point, everyone has said everything that can be said about the subject. I suggest refusing to participate in the discussion until there is some real, non-feelingish data to work with, even if it’s just hypothetical.

tolunart.2095:

Wanze.8410:

You can keep arguing with us, which will lead to NO change of the status quo, or you can actually start to address what JS said on how to prove your point is valid.

That’s the real problem – there is simply no way to prove what they claim to “feel” is wrong, because it’s nothing more than a feeling. If you don’t feel it too, you’re never going to consider it a problem.

So they just go round and round trying to obfuscate the issue until they end up with such a tangled knot of logic and emotion that no one knows what’s going on any more.

At this point, actually long before this point, everyone has said everything that can be said about the subject. I suggest refusing to participate in the discussion until there is some real, non-feelingish data to work with, even if it’s just hypothetical.

Yeah, i wonder if Gene still got a headache. I hope he comes up with something substantial. Apparantly all the good arguements and suggestions are sent to JS via PM.

Wanze.8410:

Apparantly all the good arguements and suggestions are sent to JS via PM.

I suddenly feel sorry for the guy.

Fenrir.3609:

Wanze.8410:

Apparantly all the good arguements and suggestions are sent to JS via PM.

I suddenly feel sorry for the guy.

For John Smith or the other guy?

tolunart.2095:

How can the system be more fair than this? You’re asking Anet to make the system unfair towards people who learned how to play the game better than you, so that you can feel better.

Except the TP isn’t the game.

I’ve seen comments about responsibility to the players. First and foremost above all things. Ncsoft is responsible to their shareholders. With that in mind. We should understand Anet will never do anything that will hurt their bottom line. Micro transactions are a very big thing.

Strawman, not being argued.

Nobody is asking for them to hurt their bottom line, those that are requesting change are doing so under the assumption that it would at worst be revenue neutral to them, since the only possible cost would be a reduction in the gem-to-gold element, which I refuse to believe is a significant source of revenue for them without evidence to back it up, and at best would encourage TP farmers to multi-box more, perhaps buy more gems to get gem store stuff rather than converting gold to gems, and would hopefully make the average players more satisfied with the game, and therefore more likely to spend money on it.

If it turns out they have solid reason to believe that it would hurt their bottom line, then sure, they probably wouldn’t do it and we wouldn’t want them to, but nobody is asking them to cut their own throat here.

No, its not the rich, its the AVERAGE player, who pays those prices.

The average player can’t afford the prices. The average player is completely irrelevant to the pricing of any item over a couple hundred gold. At best, the average player controls the pricing on low level greens.

The mayority of people i know that have legendaries, dont play the TP, some used gems though. If you cant or dont want to pay those prices, you seem to be below average in wealth distribution. Tough Luck.

. . .
You do understand that “the majority of people I know” does not form a representative sample, right?

And did you even think about what economic impact it would have, if the precursor droprate would be doubled? Of course it would lower the prices, people would get them for 500g, the next week for 400g and the next week for 300g. But it would also mean that doublre the amount of precursors will be crafted at the same time. Did you even consider, what impact that would have on t6 fine mats or ectos? Or silver doubloons and Lodestones? if you save 300g on your precursor, you will pay 500g more for those ressources because you have way more competitors scrambling for those ressources while their droprate hasnt been raised along with precursors.

You see what chaos is endemic in this laissez faire marketplace? Yeah, ideally there would be controls in place to dampen the pricing swings, but it would still be better than what we’ve got now. And yeah, they probably should jump up the drops on the other mats, OR the easier way would be to just reduce the amount required, like instead of 250 units it might only take 100 units, like what they’re doing with Unidentified Dyes. The goal they would be aiming for would be to make the Legendaries more available to the average player, so they would need to take a holistic look at the problem and address all likely pricing shifts simultaneously.

Speaking of your concerns here, one change I really think would benefit the game as a whole would be if they had the ability to freeze certain markets, like say freezing the price of Unidentified Dyes, such that you could not place new items into the market except to match the current buy/sell prices, and then they could activate this feature whenever they announce something that would cause a massive price shift, and then unlock it around 8PM EST, allowing players time to digest the change and be prepared to take advantage of it, rather than leaving that option only to players that have 24/7 access to the client and are able to jump on it the instant the information becomes public. Instead, what we currently have is that the market shifts occur during the early afternoon, and people who’s clients update faster often are able to better capitalize on the deals.

I don’t know, they built the system to be this chaotic, it’s their job to chart a course through it.

I am sorry, you sound more and more like someone who doesnt get what he wants fast enough and that looks for someone to blame.

I don’t think nine months is an unreasonable amount of time to wait. I could have had a baby in this time (theoretically). If I were complaining about not having a legendary in late 2012, then sure, entitled dink, but it’s spring of 2014 and I’ve been playing consistently, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that in that time, playing very frugally, I should have been able to amass enough money to buy a Precursor and the other ingredients necessary to make a Legendary. I had the player-skill aspects covered by this time last year.

You dont want to participate in farming for hours on end or playing the tp or buy gold with gems to get pricy rewards because other aspects of the game are more fun for you? Fair enough. But others do. If you get left behind, that your own choice.

But that’s my point, those elements should be BALANCED. If you want to do those things, great, you should be able to and they should offer a balanced reward, but nobody should HAVE to do those things if that’s not how they are enjoying their time in the game. You should be able to do the activities you enjoy (within reason) and earn a comparable reward to any other activity, including TP farming.

morrolan.9608:

tolunart.2095:

How can the system be more fair than this? You’re asking Anet to make the system unfair towards people who learned how to play the game better than you, so that you can feel better.

Except the TP isn’t the game.

No it’s a mechanism of the game like crafting or forging or salvaging. All which can be done for profit.

@Ohoni.6057 it most certainly is being argued you are not thinking outside of the box GW2 came in. If you look at how people need more gold ( more gem purchases) because of the separation of wealth. It is part of the bottom line.

Do you believe Anet wants people to buy gems? Yes. What would be the main reason to purchase gems? Gold. What do most people do with gems once they are purchased? Exchange for gold. What is the best way to encourage people to buy more gems? Make them need more.
imo altering anything in the game to give people a reason not to buy gems with real money is part of the bottom line.
I’ve read your post, we will just have to agree to disagree. Well I read some of them. They seem to be pretty much the same page after page of the exact same thing. Just worded differently.

fyi, The evidence you refuse to believe is posted online for all to see. Feel free to look it up.

Edit. the answers I put in 2n paragraph are mine. I’m not assuming you would answer that way.

@Ohoni.6057 it most certainly is being argued you are not thinking outside of the box GW2 came in. If you look at how people need more gold ( more gem purchases) because of the separation of wealth. It is part of the bottom line.

Again, we’re looking at the same facts, but reaching different conclusions. Basically there exist:
A. poor players want things → Poor players buy gems and convert to gold→ buy things.
B. Rich players want Gem Store stuff → Rich players buy gems using gold → buy things.
C. poor players want things → don’t want to spend cash to gold → don’t buy things.
D. Players that enjoy the game and want things from the gem store → they buy gems with cash, and spend them in the gem store, gold is not involved.

Now you seem to believe that A-types make up a significant population, that the profits from them are vital to the success of the game as a whole. I would argue that A-types are probably fairly limited in number, vastly overwhelmed by D-types in the profit model, and mostly offset by B-type players that end up not being D-types (ie they convert their massive gold wealth into gems to buy gem store stuff, rather than converting dollars into gems).

I assert that making the game seem more fair and rewarding to the average players by balancing out the profits of the TP would maybe reduce the number of A-types, but it would also lower the number of B-types (since the gold to gem rate would become prohibitive), and convert a lot of B and C types into D types.

At the end of the day, I think their overall profits would improve rather than fall, but then I don’t have ANet’s internal numbers so there’s a lot of speculation there. In either case you can’t convince me that A-type players are vital to the game without posting numbers.

MFoy.3284:

After reading through the thread I’d like us to calmly take a step back and consider a graphic that clearly shows the whole Trading Post in-game issue.

If there’s something one can learn from history is that dismissing an issue has never fixed it.

Dismissing a real issue, big or small only causes problems in the long run. From dissent to worldwide climate disasters.

Of course this isn’t a dire issue, and it doesn’t happen too often, and it doesn’t happen for too many items.

But it does happen, it allows a few players to get more wealth than they should by doing something that requires less time and effort. And by repeating the process their wealth progressively increases, and that results in a few being able to do things no one should, keeping things away from other players.

The amount of gold people earn should be relatively the same with the same time and effort, so no one feels like they should be doing something else if they want to make more coin, and instead can just focus on having fun doing the things they like.

One thing is for certain. The problem is real. And it will only get worse unless it’s addressed with time.

It’s not a molehill that people claim it’s a mountain. It’s a snowball going down a slope. Dismiss it when it’s small at the top of the slope, and you’ll end up buried under the avalanche when it reaches the bottom.

All they need to start is an initial amount of coin big enough to buyout entire stocks of rare items, and the tools to keep an eye on the market and react fast to its changes, and one they get their snowball going, it will mostly grow.

Either that, or they are blatantly lying when they brag about having scammed out of the system more coin than they will ever spend.

MithranArkanere.8957:

If there’s something one can learn from history is that dismissing an issue has never fixed it.

Dismissing a real issue, big or small only causes problems in the long run. From dissent to worldwide climate disasters.

Of course this isn’t a dire issue, and it doesn’t happen too often, and it doesn’t happen for too many items.

But it does happen, it allows a few players to get more wealth than they should by doing something that requires less time and effort. And by repeating the process their wealth progressively increases, and that results in a few being able to do things no one should, keeping things away from other players.

The amount of gold people earn should be relatively the same with the same time and effort, so no one feels like they should be doing something else if they want to make more coin, and instead can just focus on having fun doing the things they like.

One thing is for certain. The problem is real. And it will only get worse unless it’s addressed with time.

It’s not a molehill that people claim it’s a mountain. It’s a snowball going down a slope. Dismiss it when it’s small at the top of the slope, and you’ll end up buried under the avalanche when it reaches the bottom.

All they need to start is an initial amount of coin big enough to buyout entire stocks of rare items, and the tools to keep an eye on the market and react fast to its changes, and one they get their snowball going, it will mostly grow.

Either that, or they are blatantly lying when they brag about having scammed out of the system more coin than they will ever spend.

1. There is no evidence that there is an issue.
2. There phrase “more wealth than they should” is an opinion and is subjective.
3. What do you mean be “a few being able to do things no one should”?
4. What is being kept away from other players?
5. There will always be one way that is greater than another, that takes different skills, time, and effort to become efficient at in order to make greater wealth.
6. There is not one single idea presented that suggests one player having more wealth than another is harmful in any manner.
7. “Effort” is subjective and there hasn’t been an accord on how it is measured.
8. Manipulation of markets hasn’t and cannot currently occur.
9. Why would you trust someone claiming to be a scammer?

You are stating opinions as facts. You are not providing any evidence as to anything stated. I consider this post to be pure rhetoric.

brittitude.1983:

[…]

If a very small group of players have a massive amount of coin compared with the rest, they can do things like buying out entire stocks of rare items, and put them back with insane prices. It won’t matter if someone else puts some items after them, they can simply buy out as much as they can and put them back with a unreasonable value. As long as the item is rare enough to make people think it may cost that much, they’ll sell.

This would not be a problem if people could get the stuff without the trading post, but much like in Diablo III before they removed the auction house, drops in GW2 are horribly bad.
There’s not even have some form of guaranteed drop system that will kick in if you have been unlucky with drops for a very long time an give you something decent.

Yeah, you can play, and earn gold and buy it off the TP. But if you want to get the item yourself, you may take literally years. The most T6 materials I’ve ever got where from the clover recipe. I could spend 5 hours killing orrians and barely get 3 T6 materials.

I have 18K AP and I’ve played more than 4K hours, and I just found my first exotic drop 5 hours ago in WvW, after hitting 153% MF. And I’m not the kind of player that sits around in cities doing nothing. I’m always somewhere killing something. Even in WvW I keep killing animals if there’s nothing else around while I’m waiting for others.

In GW1, I filled my HoM without farming and barely trading. I completed books, salvaged, vanquished, completed elite missions, and with time I filled the HoM. Doing such a feat in GW2 would be unthinkable.

Since the TP has been turned into “the way to get things” instead “a way to get things”, you have to make sure that not a single player can ever keep things from others by using the TP, and they currently could if they have enough gold for it.

Proof has already been given that legendaries and precursors aren’t controlled by the wealthy. So if one of the slowest markets can’t/aren’t being manipulated, what markets are you suggesting are?

Proof has already been given that legendaries and precursors aren’t controlled by the wealthy. So if one of the slowest markets can’t/aren’t being manipulated, what markets are you suggesting are?

Look, I’m no expert here, but wouldn’t the most costly-per-unit and high profile markets be the trickiest to corner, especially without notice?

I think if I had the resources and interests in cornering a market, it wouldn’t be about buying up every single item of something very expensive, it would be in taking over something out of the way, like finding an item someplace in the middle of the spectrum, buy up all the stock up to a certain point well above the usual buy order price, so that the buy price is now set maybe 15-20% higher than usual, then put a wall of sell orders at that price, so it seems like that’s the going rate, and a bunch of buy orders that creep closer to that price, so there doesn’t seem to be a huge gap, and hopefully the serious players would never notice that the price had just shifted a bunch higher, but people looking for that item would fall for the new price and start buying your sell orders or overcutting your buy orders (which are already higher than the first batch you bought). You’d have to pay attention, and fill at least a few of the buy orders ASAP, then then cancel your own buy orders before the “in the know” types show up and take advantage of them, depending on how quickly people catch on I imagine there could be a lot to be made on that, but it would be risky.

The trick would be to find items where the difference between the current sell orders and the desired pricepoint are only a few orders, enough that you could take a bite on those and still turn an overall profit, and although one that moves quickly enough that you could make your intended profits within a day or less.

Ohoni.6057:

Proof has already been given that legendaries and precursors aren’t controlled by the wealthy. So if one of the slowest markets can’t/aren’t being manipulated, what markets are you suggesting are?

Look, I’m no expert here, but wouldn’t the most costly-per-unit and high profile markets be the trickiest to corner, especially without notice?

I think if I had the resources and interests in cornering a market, it wouldn’t be about buying up every single item of something very expensive, it would be in taking over something out of the way, like finding an item someplace in the middle of the spectrum, buy up all the stock up to a certain point well above the usual buy order price, so that the buy price is now set maybe 15-20% higher than usual, then put a wall of sell orders at that price, so it seems like that’s the going rate, and a bunch of buy orders that creep closer to that price, so there doesn’t seem to be a huge gap, and hopefully the serious players would never notice that the price had just shifted a bunch higher, but people looking for that item would fall for the new price and start buying your sell orders or overcutting your buy orders (which are already higher than the first batch you bought). You’d have to pay attention, and fill at least a few of the buy orders ASAP, then then cancel your own buy orders before the “in the know” types show up and take advantage of them, depending on how quickly people catch on I imagine there could be a lot to be made on that, but it would be risky.

The trick would be to find items where the difference between the current sell orders and the desired pricepoint are only a few orders, enough that you could take a bite on those and still turn an overall profit, and although one that moves quickly enough that you could make your intended profits within a day or less.

You made many false assumptions and calculations.
If you buy up every single item of an expensive item, all you do, is buy up every single item that is available on the TP. Assuming you a talking about an item that doesnt drop anymore, you still have to consider the stock in peoples banks and inventories, which is unknown to you and usually dwarfs the numbers listed on the tp.
Most people (me too) underestimate the number of players participating in the market. Take the most expensive Mini for example, the Mini KArka.
Only 8 available on the TP. But how much you reckon are being held by speculators and how much by collectors that could be reintroduced into the market, after you bought all out and listed at double the price? Hundreds or Thousands?

T5 leather? 7.5 million on the tp atm. If you just consider 100k players (my guess would be there are at least half a million active players atm) having a full stack of those in the collectible tab, it would accumulate to 25 million.

And shifting a market only 15% will earn you sweet flip all, because thats your fees and taxes. If you just buy up a couple of item between the old and the lowest listing, how did you corner the market, if you only hold less than 1% of overall supply?
Believe me, if done this. All i have done was spreading my gold around.

About your misconcecption of rich players determining the price of precursors:

In order for the top 5% of players to consume as much precursors as the 95%, they have to consume 20 times more each on average than the average player. And in that case, the consumption between those 2 would still be equal which wouldnt mean that they influence the price more than the average player. Now what to do with 20 precursors? Yeah lets just make 20 Legendaries, after all, besides playing the tp all day, i do 10 map completions. Rich players still act as 1 consumer and they have to work for account bound mats and currencies like anybody else.

But yeah, keep arguing. Looks like you are here to vent your frustration about RNG in general and how you dont get loot fast enough.
No idea what that has to do with someone else making more gold than you on the TP, though. It was explained to you multiple times by the Anet Economist and other people that rich people dont influence market prices.

Wanze.8410:

Fenrir.3609:

Wanze.8410:

Apparantly all the good arguements and suggestions are sent to JS via PM.

I suddenly feel sorry for the guy.

For John Smith or the other guy?

Primarily for JS for having to deal with an inbox full of “good” arguments and suggestions from the people who seem to be saving all their terrible ones for us to read.

If you buy up every single item of an expensive item, all you do, is buy up every single item that is available on the TP. Assuming you a talking about an item that doesnt drop anymore, you still have to consider the stock in peoples banks and inventories, which is unknown to you and usually dwarfs the numbers listed on the tp.

Yes, but keep in mind that in my case example, the idea would be to get in and out quickly, before anyone who was hording those items got wise to it. Obviously the trick would break down as soon as a another savvy TP farmer stumbled onto the item, recognized that it was selling for higher than expected, and happened to have some of that item on hand. Of course, if you pick the right item, especially non-bulk goods, the chances that even a savvy TP Farmer would happen to have some stockpiled could be fairly low.

Only 8 available on the TP. But how much you reckon are being held by speculators and how much by collectors that could be reintroduced into the market, after you bought all out and listed at double the price? Hundreds or Thousands?

Right, which is why that might not make for a good target. You’d be better off picking some random weapon in the 50s-3g range perhaps, something that moves in and out regularly enough. Or maybe a high cost but high demand food item?

And shifting a market only 15% will earn you sweet flip all, because thats your fees and taxes. If you just buy up a couple of item between the old and the lowest listing, how did you corner the market, if you only hold less than 1% of overall supply?

Well ideally you’d have buy-ordered a bunch of it beforehand, maybe you have a couple dozen of them, you buy up a dozen in a situation where the price jumps up because it had dropped significantly for some reason.

I’m not saying it would work, just that it’d work better than cornering the type of markets you were talking about.

In order for the top 5% of players to consume as much precursors as the 95%, they have to consume 20 times more each on average than the average player.

That’s nonsense math. You’re just noting that 5% is 1/10 of 100, which means kitten-all in this case. It would only make sense if every player consumed precursors at a steady rate, when in fact many players have never held a precursor. I doubt the top 5% controls the Precursor market entirely, though that wouldn’t shock me, but I would be surprised if Precusors moved regularly among the bottom 50% or so.

No idea what that has to do with someone else making more gold than you on the TP, though.

Then clearly you haven’t been paying attention, return to page one, do not collect 200g.

It was explained to you multiple times by the Anet Economist and other people that rich people dont influence market prices.

Yeah, and I’ve explained at least twice as many times that I am really not concerned about that, I’m concerned with the wealth disparity as a effort/reward outlier that disrupts the reasonable expectations of players for a fair gaming experience.

Sixteen pages and still no evidence.

I mean the people bemoaning the disparity don’t even seem to know how much you can earn via pve, let alone from the TP…

I’m sorry but stating “disparity is making the game unfair!” is not a credible argument, regardless as to how many times you keep on repeating it. By page fifty we won’t all of a sudden turn around and say "wow actually “muh disparity” is a really good argument, let’s nerf the TP guys!".

Outline the evidence (oh wait you have none), present exactly what stats you expect from JS and exactly how you would use them to present a case. Then perhaps the debate can move on.

Ohoni.6057:

It was explained to you multiple times by the Anet Economist and other people that rich people dont influence market prices.

Yeah, and I’ve explained at least twice as many times that I am really not concerned about that, I’m concerned with the wealth disparity as a effort/reward outlier that disrupts the reasonable expectations of players for a fair gaming experience.

Then why do you outright refuse to address Johns task to prove your point in a format he proposed?

John Smith.4610:

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.

Fenrir.3609:

Sixteen pages and still no evidence.

I mean the people bemoaning the disparity don’t even seem to know how much you can earn via pve, let alone from the TP…

I’m sorry but stating “disparity is making the game unfair!” is not a credible argument, regardless as to how many times you keep on repeating it. By page fifty we won’t all of a sudden turn around and say "wow actually “muh disparity” is a really good argument, let’s nerf the TP guys!".

Outline the evidence (oh wait you have none), present exactly what stats you expect from JS and exactly how you would use them to present a case. Then perhaps the debate can move on.

Exactly.

People didnt even bother on defining wealth yet but say there is a disparity.

For all that has been stated here, i would assume wealth is defined by the gold you have and if you have a Sunrise or not.

We do not have the data thus proof is an impossible condition to satisfy. What does that mean. It means that it is superfluous as a constraint. It was not applicable when JS brought it up, not applicable now, and will continue to not hold any water as long as it remains an impossible condition.

That aside….my guesstimate on the disparity would be 50 fold at the extreme low end.

Sixteen pages and still no evidence.

You keep demanding “evidence” of nothing anybody is trying to prove. What do you hope to accomplish by repeating “there’s no evidence!” over and over? You could as well keep shouting “There’s no tacos!” for all the good it accomplishes.

Then why do you outright refuse to address Johns task to prove your point in a format he proposed?

Because I’m an MMO player, not an economist, and I don’t have the intellectual tools available to me to do so. It’s the economist’s job to explain to me why I shouldn’t be bothered that there are people in the game who have tons of luxury items, while the goalpost for myself keeps moving further and further away from me faster than I can approach it.

People didnt even bother on defining wealth yet but say there is a disparity.

Ok, wealth is easy enough. “Wealth” in the game as it currently stands is one in which a player has more than two Legendaries, or comparably priced equipment (and arguably having more than one would be grounds), or at least could purchase them in gold if he really wanted. Wealth is being able to consider a 100g purchase as something relatively trivial (such as a Commander tag). Wealth is being able to seriously consider converting gold to gems to pay for 800+ gem items in the gem store, rather than giving ANet human money for them. I think that about covers how wealth functions in the game for the time being.

For all that has been stated here, i would assume wealth is defined by the gold you have and if you have a Sunrise or not.

The Legendaries you prefer are up to you, and you don’t necessarily need to have a Legendary, just to be able to fairly casually afford one if you felt like it. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a ton of gold coin, just that you’d have a ton of relatively movable assets that you could easily convert into a large amount of gold.

Essence Snow.3194:

We do not have the data thus proof is an impossible condition to satisfy. What does that mean. It means that it is superfluous as a constraint. It was not applicable when JS brought it up, not applicable now, and will continue to not hold any water as long as it remains an impossible condition.

That aside….my guesstimate on the disparity would be 50 fold at the extreme low end.

How would you factor in time played?
Ohoni stated he nearly played since launch, just like me, but i have double as much hours played…

How would you factor in time played?
Ohoni stated he nearly played since launch, just like me, but i have double as much hours played…

How do you check how many hours I’ve played? In any case, if someone does put in twice as many hours, they would deserve twice as much reward, give or take, but not ten times as much reward or more.

Ohoni.6057:

You keep demanding “evidence” of nothing anybody is trying to prove. What do you hope to accomplish by repeating “there’s no evidence!” over and over? You could as well keep shouting “There’s no tacos!” for all the good it accomplishes.

Please tell me you are joking.

When you claim that a system needs changing because of x, y, z, then the onus is on you to present evidence which points to that being the case.

At this point in time, not only does the anti TP crowd have no evidence, they don’t even seem to know what evidence they need or what they would do with it if they had it.

A good approach would be:

“Hey guys, I have a theory about an issue with the TP and the economy in general. Whilst I have tried to collate evidence in the game myself to back this up (goes on to explain exactly how they had gone about doing this), I need some specific information to see if I am indeed correct. Could you and/or JS give me x, y and z data? I will then use this data in (explains exactly how) such a way as to verify if my case is true or not. Thanks!”

The way we see the anti TP case presented in this thread:

“The disparity is to large and the systems need changing. I have no proof of it but there you go. I am now going to spam the exact same argument over and over again as though it is gospel”.

Ohoni.6057:

Because I’m an MMO player, not an economist, and I don’t have the intellectual tools available to me to do so. It’s the economist’s job to explain to me why I shouldn’t be bothered that there are people in the game who have tons of luxury items, while the goalpost for myself keeps moving further and further away from me faster than I can approach it.

Would it be a satisfactory answer, if the Economist would tell you:
Hey Ohoni, thanks for bringing up your concern. The reason why other players have more luxury items than you is because they were playing the game more effectively than you, so on average, they accumulated more wealth in their game time. Some people also logged considerably more game time than you.
And then there are others, who buy gems with real money, which puts the butter on my bread, and convert those gems into gold to reach their goal in game faster.

Just woke up so plz bear with me…

That’s a very valid and complicated issue. As how are we to tell how many hours are spent playing the tp vs playing core content? It all gets rather complicated even though it may seem simple. For example how many hour have I spent? Idk..I usually place orders and put listings up while I play.

How do we distinguish playing the tp as a means from using it as a compliment to core play?

Without knowing what extent their metrics are capable of, I can’t give a solid answer.

Essence Snow.3194:

Just woke up so plz bear with me…

That’s a very valid and complicated issue. As how are we to tell how many hours are spent playing the tp vs playing core content? It all gets rather complicated even though it may seem simple. For example how many hour have I spent? Idk..I usually place orders and put listings up while I play.

How do we distinguish playing the tp as a means from using it as a compliment to core play?

Without knowing what extent their metrics are capable of, I can’t give to solid answer.

As you were one of the people asking for a new wealth disparity sheet:

How would you determine wealth distribution?
How is all the stuff stored in guild banks being alotted?
How are currencies other than gold considered?
At what stage do oyu consider an account inactive and leave it out of the equation?

Keep in mind that the last wealth disparity graph we have seen was illustrating data from beta weekend, which included way less accounts and a way shorter timeframe.
Active accounts now could range from 20 months with over 7000 hours logged to 1 day old and 1 hour logged.

The reason we havent seen another wealth disparity graph isnt because Anet wants to cover up wealth disparity, its because the task to do it is very complicated now.

All of the same factors were around back then so by whatever means the conclusions were drawn then they should still apply, just on a grander scale. Ofc if the information back then was invalid, then idk.

It’s a valid point, even with statistics then the issue is rather complicated.

Which is why JS and others have asked people to outline exactly what statistics they would want (in detail) and how they would use them (in detail).

At least debating about what stats/metrics would be useful and how they would be useful pushes the debate into more constructive grounds (well probably not but one can hope). The current cycle of “it’s broken!” to be answered by “you have no proof!” is getting us nowhere.