Guild Wars 2

As I have no data at all to work with this is something of a speculative/inquisitive post.

Basically, the Lost Shores event created a large pool of people with a HUGE amount of extra cash. Now, I’m only speaking personally, but had I been able to attend the event and got a precursor (or similarly expensive item), then the first thing I would have done would have been to sell it and buy gems.

Now, I don’t consider the precursors likely to have effected the gold market that much, but given that the number of people buying gems will be significantly lower than people using the TP, I am more inclined to think that maybe this event had an effect.

So, two questions:

1) Is it likely that the Lost Shores event had the additional consequence of driving the gem prices up?

2) Could ANet make the market fairer on less hardcore players by removing a ‘top tier’ of players from the gem calculations? This would prevent events like the Lost Shore and RNG having even more negative consequences on players, which seems like a good thing considering the recent atmosphere.

Also, I’d just like to note that I do not think gems should be extremely cheap. I was happily working towards getting enough to buy a new character/bank slot just prior to the Lost Shores (I thought the price would come back down), and was actually considering it to be a fun challenge/reward balance.

1) There could be arguments for and against. I didn’t pay much attention to the Lost Shores event, but I believe there were some limited period items available for gem purchase, which tends to drive price up.

2) No. Gem calculation is not based on the economy of individual players. It’s based on global supply and demand. If you want to remove players from the calculation, that means preventing them from using the gem exchange. Also, if ANet ever does something specifically to please the people who wants to buy gems with gold, they’ll be kitten all over the people wanting to buy gold with gems.

Why would it mean preventing them from using the gem exchange? What I’m suggesting is that if the gem purchase market is being affected by a small percentage of players (e.g. those who got precursors in the Karka chest), then it would be fairer to ignore their purchases in calculations.

e.g. If the top 5% of players (in gold terms) are buying 20% of the gems, then taking them out of the equation would give everyone else a break. If that top 5% comprises a lot of people who were handed the money from the Lost Shores, then this seems fair.

Precursors are not sold to merchants, they are sold to players. No extra money was generated. In fact 15% of the gold was removed from the game due to the selling tax.

Since the karka chest dropped exotics, soulbounds and rares its fair to say most of it was sold at the trading post or kept. So in reality, while tons of players made a profit off that chest, it actually resulted in tons of gold being removed from the economy by taxes.

Karka chest didn’t add gold to the game. It added items, and you can’t trade items for gems. The only way to turn items into gold into gems is to vendor them.

Also, I’m pretty sure the point of gems is that casual players are intended to buy them with cash, not in-game gold.

I know it didn’t add gold. I redistributed it. Specifically, it redistributed it in a way that allowed ‘casual’ players, and mid-level players to spend all they wanted to in the gem store.

A player with say, 10 gold, won’t spend a lot of that in the store. A player with 200-300 gold will. The Karka event turned a lot of 10-gold players into 200-300 gold players. This means that the people who lucked out on the chest can buy EVERYTHING in the store, and everyone else can buy, at a push, one or two items.

Casual players can still spend real cash. I have no issue with the store making money. The problem is that the store is supposed to be usable without spending real money. If someone wants to buy lots of costumes, keys and bank slots with real cash, great. The problem is that lots of players in the casual/medium tier can’t utilise the secondary function of the gem store.

Actually the event in Lost Shores itself I don’t think had a huge impact on the economy, if anything, by flooding the market with high value items it lowered the value of them and thus removed profits that would other wise be gained from selling them at a lower price.

Southern Coast does have a higher drop rate of certain t6 mats though than other areas and that might cause a slight bump in the gold out there for farmers but the rate of drop is not so insane that I think it would upset the economy, in fact at about 1 – 2 g an hour of concentrated farming, it makes for a pretty reasonable and reliable place for people to earn coin with out earning insane and disturbing amounts of coin.

Oh, I don’t think it affected the Gold economy, I think it affected the Gem store.

To put it simply, let me use a couple of assumptions:

1) Players with less than 10G do not spend very little in the gem store.
2) Playes with more than 200G spend a lot in the gem store.
3) The Karka event turned a lot of players with less than 10G into players with more than 200G.

Therefore, the Karka event resulted in a lot of players spending a lot of money in the gem store.

So, this hasn’t really affected the casual players (who wouldn’t have bought stuff anyway), but it might have affected the mid-tier players who at one point could have afforded to buy a few things in the store, and now can’t.

I think that’s a false premise and assuming the Karka event made a lot more millionaires than it did.

The precurser drops were very low (remember our population size is very large here, though I don’t know how many participated in the event exactly or what the drop rate was) and when they were purchased it was a redistribution of wealth because other PCs bought them from other PCs. It didn’t change the amount of coin in the in game economy at all and even if you assume the ONLY people who got good things were ones who had less than 10G (which is a weak premise, since I would actually say the majority of people involved in the event had well kitted, high level chars), then all it did was take gold that the people with +200G (which by your premise would likely have been spent in the gem store) and moved it to others (who you assume will spend it in the gem store). Thus nulling out any effect.

Not quite. Assuming my premise is at least vaguely accurate, then the people who already had 200G would already have spent money in the gem store, and thus this actually makes the problem worse. The Karka event redistributed money from people who had already bought the things they really wanted (and thus were unlikely to buy much more) to people who didn’t.

This argument also applies, to a lesser extent, to the big traders. Basically, a small percentage of players have huge amounts of money. This is absolutely fine on the trading post because it is possible to get materials in game (I like that legendaries are stupidly hard to get), but that means they are driving up the price of gems, which can only be got through the gem store for cash or gold.

In both instances, ignoring the top 5% of player spending could prevent casual and mid-tier players being excluded from the gold to gem aspect of the store.

Maybe. As a numbers person I would love to see some hard numbers from ANet though I expect those are unlikely to be available for a while yet. IF though you go to http://www.gw2spidy.com/ you can get a lot of data on gold and gems and sales patterns and you’ll see that there wasn’t a huge spike on Nov 22 like you might expect if suddenly people were like ‘OMG I have money now I can get gems!!!’.

I would suggest a lot of those previously poor people with cash probably dumped it into the NPC and PC outlets in the game economy and bought things like t3 armor and good runes and such but probably not a lot dumped them into gems, at least if they did they didn’t immediately. The incline is pretty steady around the event and spikes quite a bit before it (around the 14th) and in the last few days (around the 28-29).

And still, we’re talking about 14 – 16 gold to buy 800 gems (enough for a holiday outfit, or another character slot, or some bank slots for example). That’s not unreasonable for vanity and convenience items with the maturity of the game where it is now. If you have tapped out at level 80 most players can save that up in 1 – 2 weeks playing their main (it takes a lot longer when you’re levelling lower level characters though).

I expect another spike just before the Winter’s Day event starts so… if you think you’ll need gems then that you’re going to buy with gold, buy them now.

Oh yes, I’d like to see numbers too. I could be COMPLETELY wrong about this. My suspicion is that about 2-5% of players are contributing to about 20% of the gem purchases. There will be additional players who are buying gems to trade back to gold, but they don’t count as they will eventually balance out the market.

I am not claiming the spike started because of the chest. The Lost Shores caused that. I am saying that the chest may well have kept the spike going, rather than allowing it to level out/ go back down after the event.

I agree in principle that gems aren’t too far out of control just yet, but I think you underestimate the difficulty. Gems are doubling in value every month, meaning that starting now someone doesn’t have to collect 16G in two weeks, they need to collect (about) 24G. Even for a level 80 player this is a big ask without playing the market, and because the price is continually doubling it isn’t something they can just take their time over. Even a casual player can eventually get Twilight (in theory) by simply investing enough time over several years. If the price of gems accelerates beyond their means, then they can never utilise the gold to gem function of the shop.

Also, bear in mind that if they start now, earn 24G, and then spend it all on a character slot, then that puts them all the way back to square one. They have an extra slot and zero money. This just seems hugely unfair.

Oh yes. And frankly I personally would rather just pay the $10 for 800 gems or what ever the static real money cost is in the store (which is the point I imagine), but the option is still there for those who want or need it.

That said there is nothing at all that is mandatory for play in the store either. It’s just vanity and convenience. There is no barrier to play by opting out of the store entirely. (though I consider being forced to limit ones self to 1 bank slot to be cruel and unusual torture personally).

Oh yes, it is a luxury (beyond the bank slot and possibly the BL salvage chest), but I’m not advocating everyone having everything. People with a lot of gold or cash should be able to buy anything/everything they want. The problem is that everyone can’t even afford a single purchase at the moment without bankrupting themselves.

Honestly, if the gem store was cash only, I wouldn’t really have an issue with this. Its giving the extra option to the lucky few who got precursors (and the trading post players) that makes it seem unfair to me. I’m currently playing the TP myself, so could afford the things I actually want (still losing a huge chunk of my gold). But it doesn’t seem right that players are forced to use such tactics in order to keep up with the curve. A casual player, playing normally, should be able to get an extra character/bank slot 3 or 4 months into the game.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Oh yes, it is a luxury (beyond the bank slot and possibly the BL salvage chest), but I’m not advocating everyone having everything. … The problem is that everyone can’t even afford a single purchase at the moment without bankrupting themselves.

You’re contradicting yourself. Either everyone should have everything, or everyone shouldn’t have everything. Either everyone can afford everything, or there are some things some people can’t afford. Pick one and stick to it, but please don’t go around making mountains out of molehills.

There’s only 1 thing arena.net could do to make gem prices more transparent and that’s adding buy and sell orders instead of the current exchange. (although I think the price would skyrocket to 3-4g / 100gems)

On the other hand, don’t forget arena.net needs money to run the game. If you whine about high gem prices, that basically means less people are supporting the game compared to the people who want to play it! The good thing here is that every exchange has another side and you’re free to lower the gem price by converting some of your cash into ingame goodies.

Gilosean, no I am not contradicting myself. I said quite clearly that I don’t think everyone should have everything. Players who lucked out and players who play the TP can buy the whole shop if they want to (as in, they can have EVERYTHING). The current gem acceleration means that low tier players can’t get ANYTHING on the shop.

Note that the acceleration is more of a problem than the price. If a low level player could look at the gem store and think “I need to save up 16G to buy a character” that would be fine. Unfortunately, they need to think “I need to save up 16G plus inflation as fast as possible before the price escalates beyond anything I could possibly buy”. This can only really be done by playing the TP or heavy farming, which seems an unintended thing to force players into.

marnick, I totally agree. I am glad that the gem store makes real cash for ANet, but I would prefer it did so by including lots of things that people wanted to buy, not by pricing low level-players out of buying anything at all. The gold to gem shop is basically totally inaccessible to most players at the moment, which seems unfair.