Inflation out of control
What do you expect?
Money supply in four months is going to explode. With/without Bots when you increase the money supply exponentially very quickly you will get pretty good inflation.
The other side of the coin is inflation is helping people, like myself, gain coins better.
[SU]
But the value of the coins have drastically gone down.
From a economic standpoint the rate of inflation is disproportionate to the value of gold. I think that if this trend continues for another 2-4 weeks the economy is going to look a whole lot like thinly sliced swiss cheese.
What’s funny is, people who took a break for 3-4 weeks and come back used to think 30-40g was a lot. Now 30-40g is nothing and what money they’ve gained has devalued so much in so little time instead of feeling rich, they feel and ARE much more poor. Coupled with the sudden decrease in supplies in a lot of items like lodestones and T5/T6 mats and thus increase in price, they feel even less rich.
Thankfully I’ve been playing the tradepost game for a couple of weeks and speculated on good price spikes, but my friends who took a small break werre not so lucky. Sucks to be them and I’m sure this is happening to more and more people, especially casuals. One of them even logged on for a day, saw the prices, nobody farming in Orr, and then logged off and never came back on. I was sad.
(edited by ArkisTruefire.1746)
The items were far too cheap, 2g to max out a craft was dirt cheap as it gets you a lot of levels. The prices are going to where they should have been without bots.
I think the problem isn’t that they were too cheap. What should have happened was a slower ban process to make it so people get “eased” into this. You couple this is the ascended item’s requirements and you get an aggravated market where a bunch of people who used to play literally 3 weeks ago, come back and see the price of ectos/materials/etc. double, triple, or go up even more than that and it really does make people feel like they’ve lost a lot of progress.
Bots were a problem. Banning them was the correct thing to do. Banning them all and causing all supply to go away in 2-3 days then releasing ascended gear withint a small time period might not have been the best idea for returning players. I don’t mind this, but I can see why a lot of people (guildies of mine especially) come back after playing their CoD, Halo, and AC3 for a few weeks to a totally different TP game where they suddenly feel like their cash is worth a lot less.
(edited by ArkisTruefire.1746)
9g per divinity rune, I rest my case.
The days have come when making 20g a day is considered average and anything less is a disgrace. I make around 40~50g in a few hours but I stopped feeling special long ago, only pity for those who lost to the inflation.
What’s funny is, people who took a break for 3-4 weeks and come back used to think 30-40g was a lot. Now 30-40g is nothing and what money they’ve gained has devalued so much in so little time instead of feeling rich, they feel and ARE much more poor. Coupled with the sudden decrease in supplies in a lot of items like lodestones and T5/T6 mats and thus increase in price, they feel even less rich.
Thankfully I’ve been playing the tradepost game for a couple of weeks and speculated on good price spikes, but my friends who took a small break werre not so lucky. Sucks to be them and I’m sure this is happening to more and more people, especially casuals. One of them even logged on for a day, saw the prices, nobody farming in Orr, and then logged off and never came back on. I was sad.
If I was to take a break from the game (and it will be a while before I do so) I would hedge against inflation by converting most of my gold into gems.
To use your example, 3 weeks ago the gold → gem rate was about 80s per 100 gems, so 30 gold would have bought 3750 gems. Today, the gem → gold rate is around 1g 20s per 100 gems, so those 3750 gems would convert back into 45 gold.
Doing this may not complete negate the effects of inflation, but it does give you some protection against your in-game wealth being completely devalued.
Right Astraea, that would be the best thing to do. That or invest in a high valued material that will always be high valued (more risky). However, again, these are casuals were talking about who just want to log on and get their cool exotic weapon (not even a legendary) or full exotics.
The problem is really the SPEED at which this happened. If I went on vacation for one week, I should not see ectos climb 10 silver. Which is what just happened: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721
I think the problem isn’t that they were too cheap. What should have happened was a slower ban process to make it so people get “eased” into this. You couple this is the ascended item’s requirements and you get an aggravated market where a bunch of people who used to play literally 3 weeks ago, come back and see the price of ectos/materials/etc. double, triple, or go up even more than that and it really does make people feel like they’ve lost a lot of progress.
Bots were a problem. Banning them was the correct thing to do. Banning them all and causing all supply to go away in 2-3 days then releasing ascended gear withint a small time period might not have been the best idea for returning players. I don’t mind this, but I can see why a lot of people (guildies of mine especially) come back after playing their CoD, Halo, and AC3 for a few weeks to a totally different TP game where they suddenly feel like their cash is worth a lot less.
I’ve posted this a few times now, but I’ll repeat it here one more time…
Look at the volumes of sell listings and buy orders for ectos and you will see that this is a supply-side issue more than a demand side issue. True, there has been increased demand, but this increase mostly happened a week before the introduction of ascended items and is relatively minor compared to the decrease in supply.
Seriously if i had enough gold I’d buy 2000 ectos right now.
For reasons covered in this thread my activity has drastically been reduced. My moderate 18g has been reduced to chump change, heck the gem prices have inflated to such astronomical levels I can’t even get boosters or a makeover kit without spending large amounts of gold so my solution has been to not play, if Anet (the government) doesn’t, can’t and won’t protect me from inflation then I’m going to move to another country (another game).
It’s akin to everyone having dual citizenship and GW2 is a country where there is no government control in a capitalist country where the interest rates have been unregulated which in turn devalues the currency so instead of continuing to see our currency devalue we simply go to the other country where we’re still moderately wealthy.
And you’re correct Astraea, this is completely a supply issue. But knowing that, they should have bumped up the salvage rate of ectos or drop rate of rares to negate this effect. The same is true of T6 materials across the board. Again, if I were to come back to a game where ectos were suddenly 1 gold on a two week break without investing my gold, I’d be kind of frustrated and probably lose some motivation to play.
Easing people in and a slower climb would have probably been better and we would have less of this whining about grind and inflation.
Right Astraea, that would be the best thing to do. That or invest in a high valued material that will always be high valued (more risky). However, again, these are casuals were talking about who just want to log on and get their cool exotic weapon (not even a legendary) or full exotics.
The problem is really the SPEED at which this happened. If I went on vacation for one week, I should not see ectos climb 10 silver. Which is what just happened: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721
I’ve just linked that same graph in another post… lol. Ectos have been rising for the past month, and people have been talking about this issue for the past few weeks, so if I took a break now I would expect them to keep rising.
I can see your point however, not everyone is as informed as everyone else, and so some of these changes may have come as a surprise to the more casual players like your friends. Having said that, the game has only been going for just over 3 months, so it may have been somewhat optimistic of them to have expect the game’s economy to have fully stabilised in that time.
For reasons covered in this thread my activity has drastically been reduced. My moderate 18g has been reduced to chump change, heck the gem prices have inflated to such astronomical levels I can’t even get boosters or a makeover kit without spending large amounts of gold so my solution has been to not play, if Anet (the government) doesn’t, can’t and won’t protect me from inflation then I’m going to move to another country (another game).
It’s akin to everyone having dual citizenship and GW2 is a country where there is no government control in a capitalist country where the interest rates have been unregulated which in turn devalues the currency so instead of continuing to see our currency devalue we simply go to the other country where we’re still moderately wealthy.
I’m sorry, I just can’t understand this mindset.
I have less than 18 gold yet I can buy ectos and T6 mats on the TP and craft exotics to sell on the TP for a profit.
I can go run dungeons, explore the world, do events, WvW without worrying about how much gold I have. If I can’t afford some of the non-essential items from the gem store, it doesn’t really affect my enjoyment from playing the game.
The problem here is most normal people don’t play gw2 to play the virtual world stock market. People should be making the vast majority of their in game money wandering the world killing things, rescuing maidens, and killing dragons, not having a heroic battle speculating ectoplasm prices.
The game is supposed to be an escape from the real world, not a lesson in economics.
The problem here is most normal people don’t play gw2 to play the virtual world stock market. People should be making the vast majority of their in game money wandering the world killing things, rescuing maidens, and killing dragons, not having a heroic battle speculating ectoplasm prices.
The game is supposed to be an escape from the real world, not a lesson in economics.
100 times this, some words of wisdom instead of trying to be a smart—- and lecturing everyone how they should play to achieve their goals.
The problem here is most normal people don’t play gw2 to play the virtual world stock market. People should be making the vast majority of their in game money wandering the world killing things, rescuing maidens, and killing dragons, not having a heroic battle speculating ectoplasm prices.
The game is supposed to be an escape from the real world, not a lesson in economics.
I can guarantee with certainty that there is no significant degree of speculation going on with Ecto pricing. It’s the fact that demand for ectos is greater than supply, so prices are going up.
Some people might be buying ectos and holding onto them in the hope that prices will continue to rise to a point where they can sell them for a profit after deducting fees, but that’s not what’s driving the price increase.
I’m buying ectos to use in crafting exotics and I can generally outbid the lowest bidder by a few copper and get the few ectos I require within a couple of minutes, so there are plenty of people willing to sell at the price buyers are prepared to pay. It’s just that there are a lot more buyers constantly outbidding each other and/or buying at the lowest sell price, so the price is going up.
Ectos are not going up any faster than the normal market. Compare for example …
http://www.guildwarstrade.com/item/12138
to
http://www.guildwarstrade.com/item/19721
We are seeing across the board increase in prices. I think it probably has to do with the mass bot banning.
So, we might be at a peek right now. I think we will see prices return to the normal trend line. But, who knows.
(edited by kwolf.4306)
I have to admit that as I do nodes rotations religiously every day, I myself simply keep earning more per each run these days, so I can safely say that mats runs as income is not negatively affected by the inflation.
We are seeing across the board increase in prices. I think it probably has to do with the mass bot banning. But, you will see, it looks like the bots are back …
http://www.guildwarstrade.com/blackmarket
So, we might be at a peek right now. I think we will see prices return to the normal trend line. But, who knows.
Part of this may be related the recent increase in the official gem → gold rate and not necessarily to a surge in bot activity. I do know that there are still bots around, and of course eradicating bots will be an ongoing battle for ArenaNet, but I’m not sure that we’re anywhere near the point we were at before the mass banning occured.
I’m not sure where the prices will peak, but I do think that they will plateau at some point in the future…
For economists, what will happen once gold has devalued to the point of becoming like mickey mouse money?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_government-issued_Philippine_Peso
Don’t disturb me, I have a cat in me at the moment.
Let’s hope the prices drop. It’d be nice to actually be able to afford gems for a change without using real $$.
For economists, what will happen once gold has devalued to the point of becoming like mickey mouse money?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_government-issued_Philippine_Peso
Given it’s a virtual world where you don’t need to pay for food, housing, etc. just to survive, I’m not sure it’s such a big deal.
A lot of the costs you need to pay in order to do things in the game world are fixed (e.g. waypoint costs, repair costs, trait resets, etc.) and don’t depend on how much wealth is being generated by players.
I don’t see the problem here, except having to invest in some items (like ectos) to avoid losing the wealth you would lose by saving only gold. If prices are higher on some items, then selling those items will give you more gold.
Look on the bright side, it’ll be easier to get a full set of t3 armor. It really sucks though, there’s a few people (around 100 probably) that have TONS of money, like 1k gold (legit players – not botters) and they can basically do what they want with us