Guild Wars 2

Preamble: I don’t have a firm enough grasp of economics to have an argument one way or another, I just have a vague opinion based on my experience in the game over the last 6 months.
Definition: When I talk about loot I mean solely physical item drops. Not gold.

With the recent looming changes to the mega boss events I found myself hesitantly despairing as I have watched the prices of Ectos and rares rise; that coupled with the recent rise in the cost of T6 mats I wondered without all the loot, how was I going to pay for it all? Then it occurred to me that my issue isn’t less loot, it is an anticipation of less gold income I would be getting overall. It wouldn’t matter if Ectos, for instance, were 25 silver or 1 gold as long as I was feeling that my inflow of cash was adequate enough to at least pay for what I wanted.

I consider myself a semi-casual player (650-700 hrs. Adjust to player type based on whether or not you think that number of hours is semi-casual). Before it started raining rares, I felt that my gold income was not adequate – at least if I spent any amount if time in the open world. Then after it started raining rares, with the steady stream of Ectos I was getting I finally felt like I had the extra cash to pay for things I wanted. Like getting that Valkyire gear for my ranger alt. Buying a mini pet here and there to work toward that achievement. Now I wonder if after the changes I will go back to feeling like I don’t have enough income per time spent in game.

I feel like my gold income has gone up and down like a yo-yo, as Anet has buffed/nerfed ways to get good loot since launch. A nerf to loot has always seemed like an over-nerf to my cash flow, and it makes me wonder if perhaps getting gold is tied too heavily to getting physical items, which are then sold for gold

So my question to you economy junkies, do you think this is true in the larger scope of the game? Would the game economy be better off if Anet stopped playing a yo-yo game with loot drops and focused more on adjusting cash drops?

Discuss, and educate me

Cash drops? You mean gold faucets?

If they increased that, such as increasing the vendor selling prices upwards, you are actually losing purchasing power. So your gold buys less. Lets say your 1G can buy you 3 ectos right now, and they decreased your purchasing power by increasing gold drops/vendor prices. Then those same 3 ectos would cost you way more than 1G since everyone else in the economy has more money.

Whenever there are loot changes, there are always people who come out on top and people who lose out.

With the rising price of globs, those who farm for globs and sell them are better off by having more gold for their items. But those who buy globs for their recipes are worse off since they have less purchasing power. But all in all, the price is low enough to satisfy both the buyers and sellers. It’s not skewered to one side.

I think that’s one of the pre-requisites that John Smith looks at in the economy. Does the item have a good enough price to encourage appropriate velocity (transactions), especially considering Ecto is the unofficial currency in game? And then he also looks at controlling inflation, and which is related to the selling price of an item.

He needs to balance the need to keep game inflation under control while also making the game rewarding for players.

There are many people here who claim to know more than our resident economist, but I think we should all trust the guy who counts this as his job. Not to mention the plethora of data that he has at his disposal to analyze.

I’ll use Diablo 3 for an example of why its bad to have a nearly endless supply of gold flushed into an economy leads to the consumer having almost no buying power. I’ve probably made around 70 million gold through the course of my playtime in Diablo 3, perhaps 5 million of which was through auction house sales (I’m a pack rat and it pains me to sell nice things I find). I currently have 40 million gold in my account. Guess what that 40 million gold affords me in terms of upgrades for my primary character? 200 million is pretty much the base price of anything that would be considered an upgrade. When you have stuff listed for 1.5 billion buyouts, you know you have a broken economy. Then again, maybe I’m wrong and the vast majority of D3 players are sitting on billions?

Anticipated inflation isn’t a real issue here, in all honesty. If ANet announced that they would be increasing gold drops by a lot in future patches, then the economy would be able to react quickly and efficiently (most likely).

But I think that the real issue here is as Icepick stated: it’s extremely inconvenient to try and count out prices of things in millions of gold. There’s just no reason for ANet to do it. It makes the transaction cost of using money higher, which will in turn hurt trading on the TP.

Of course, if the inflation is unanticipated, it gets even worse. Then you would have all the same problems as before, but also the issue of arbitrary winners and losers… The guys with 100 gold in the bank instantly going broke while the guy that hung onto 10 ectos becomes insanely rich.

Honestly, I think the issue ends up being one of currency denomination. I think the economy is balanced around the same gold/platinum system from the original Guild Wars but has the copper/silver/gold system more akin to a number of other games. While it’s not the economic “rational” way of looking at things, people measure their wealth not by its purchasing power, but by its gross size, often compared to other games. They don’t see 1g as 3-4 ectos or 1 destroyer lodestone. They see 1g as a measley one gold that is all their profit from some activity they spent time on. They think “if I had been playing WoW, I’d have at least 30g from that same activity!” They should be measuring things by their purchasing power, but they’re measuring by some other imagined metric because the numbers are small.

But, let’s imagine that instead of a 100c = 1s, 100s=1g, and therefore 10,000c=1g system, what if we were dealing with one where 1000g=1p? Those rares that came out of that fractal chest? Now they’re worth 2.5p not 0.25g. Get a nice exotic that came out? It could be worth 30p-100p! Purchasing power remains the same, but people are rewarded with bigger numbers in their inventory or bank tab. The currency figures are more in line with those that other games may have made them expect. Functionally, there’s no difference between those systems, but I staunchly believe people would be more happy with the gold/platinum system than the current copper/silver/gold system.

Now, the reason why I believe this is comes from shortly after release. Back before the TP was functioning, there were constantly people crying about being “poor” in game. They complained that they didn’t have any money, even though there wasn’t any real way to spend money in game. I even asked a few of them why they thought they were poor. No one ever talked about their purchasing power. There was nothing to spend money on at that point, so they couldn’t possible know whether they could afford things or not. The concern ultimately seemed to stem from the fact that they had been playing for days or weeks, and they didn’t even have double digits of gold. We can easily see right now that there’s almost no way for a level 30 player to even spend 10g on meaningful items. It’s hard for someone that level to even spend 1g, but people were convinced they were in abject poverty.

Another thing to think about is how much wealth is stored in the collectibles tab. In WoW, I rarely had 200 of any commodity unless I was actively making something or playing a market. Now I’ve got >2000 ore & bar sitting in the bank, taking up virtually no space; it could be currency anytime I decide to cash out or get around to more crafting. While leveling my first toon, I routinely sold my unused mats as I gathered them so I could comfortably buy the things I wanted.

In my opinion the way GW2 handles gold sinks is amazing. And I would never complain about it.

100G into runestones to make a legendary is brilliant. Its a big time item you have to create a gold sink. Legendaries also sink tons of mats away. Wp costs are a good idea.

Even better is having to use gold and commendations to buy new ascended earrings. Taking more gold out of the system while rewarding people for spending it is the only reason this game hasnt turned Diablo 3. They have done one hell of a job there. Kudos to John and other Devs. Lets see where it will be a year from now.

More cash drops = big time inflation and a big time no no.