Guild Wars 2

Nebilim.5127:

This would be true if gold sellers couldn’t produce precursors. Do you know how much exotics do we need to trow in the forge to get a precursor? I remember some guilds making experiments, and you need about 80~200 exotics. So we have now a company capable of farming/botting thousands of T6~T5 mats, ectos and the rest of the crafting recipes to make an exotic greatsword, and all they need to do is just throw them out in the forge and make an item that cost 600 gold, is very desirable and high in demand and thrice the valor what they would probably spend buying the necessary items.

I haven’t worked the math, but even assuming that it is actually more cost effective to craft exotics and forge them rather than just sell the mats and ectos, then botting is the problem, not the selling of precursors; again, anything sold on the TP requires that gold be removed, not added, to the economy. And they’ve been fairly effective at preventing botting, and are continuing to work on eliminating it further. That cuts off that avenue better than anything else.

Ursan.7846:

Nebilim.5127:

This would be true if gold sellers couldn’t produce precursors. Do you know how much exotics do we need to trow in the forge to get a precursor? I remember some guilds making experiments, and you need about 80~200 exotics. So we have now a company capable of farming/botting thousands of T6~T5 mats, ectos and the rest of the crafting recipes to make an exotic greatsword, and all they need to do is just throw them out in the forge and make an item that cost 600 gold, is very desirable and high in demand and thrice the valor what they would probably spend buying the necessary items.

So what if they can just produce precursors? Are you saying that causes inflation? Did you actually read my post? I feel like I pretty clearly outlined why inflations happen in an MMO.

Are you saying someone who have a machine who prints money cannot affect the inflation of the market?

You have no idea how much in game money gold sellers have, they have so much to sell for real money, they can buy throw away accounts to spam people on the official forums.

Well, let me quickly explain why it is an issue.

It is really not practical to earn the money for a precursor through ordinary game play. You might get lucky and have the RNG Gods shine down on you, getting one precursor you can then sell to fund a large portion of the cost to purchase the one you do desire. However, the only way most people will be able to afford a precursor is to either buy the gold from a gold seller, or play the TP for profit.

People playing the TP for profit start small and build their wealth over time, being able to step foot into more and more lucrative markets as they go. Raw cost is not always the determination of most profit. A precursor may provide the most profit for a single sale, by far, but those sales can be few and far between. Active, hive volume markets can be very lucrative due to volume.

The higher the price of precursors goes, the more out of reach those items are to players who actually play the game, rather than play the TP. This drives more players to either buy gold from gold sellers, play the market for profits themselves, or just quit the game in frustration.

The goal of being able to afford the most expensive items on the TP, either for personal use, or as “an investment”, likely drives a large portion of inflation at all levels of the game.

The inflation we are seeing is largely due to the concentration of wealth into the hands of the few. Most players playing the game are not earning more money, they are just seeing the time it takes to earn the money to buy their leveling gear and level 80 exotics take longer an longer.

Inflation in the game is mostly driven by those playing the TP for profit, with the “market cap” increasing as ordinary players bite the bullet and buy things they need at higher prices and with longer intervals between purchases.

The highest price items just allow for those most successful at playing the market to earn more and more money doing so. Those players don’t stop playing and manipulating the commodity markets. They do, though, eventually reach an amount of wealth that allows them to easily manipulate the market on commodities and necessities.

The biggest hedge against such levels of manipulation was to be the “global” nature of the TP. Surely the markets would be too big to be manipulated by an individual? Well, goods selling for well over 20G have given them the mechanism for earning the wealth needed to eventually manipulate the global markets.

There a limit to how many orders a non-cheating trader can execute in a day. If the richest markets were ordinary exotics and T6 mats, that limit on how many orders a player could successfully manage would limit the rate of growth of TP “business”.

Precursors and other high priced items make levels of wealth accumulation practical that would not be practical otherwise. Don’t forget, they also provide the incentive for players to stop playing the actual game and start playing the TP, as well as for players to buy gold or pre-cursors from gold sellers. The highest price items fuel the behaviors that lead to inflation and these pressures can not be solved via ordinary money sinks, as those money sinks really only effect people playing the actual game, not those botting for gold or playing the TP for profit. It becomes a vicious, inflationary cycle.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Dear Ursan, my friend! You hit the jackpot.
I’m, as a Game Content Designer, currently working on a HUGE system redesign for Guild Wars 2.

And I have my outworked idea how a Legendary should be crafted…

And if the player base lacks the skill, what then? They’ll grind for a while, then decide to buy money from RMT Gold sellers. Whoever has no skills for making a Legendary, don’t even deserves it imo.

So how do you define skill in this game?

Jumping puzzles? Soloing dungeons? WvW kills?

Will you have to complete these tasks only once? Many times? How many times? How do you tune it so that only the most worthy are able to achieve it?

Remember, we’re working under the assumption that we want to retain the same rarity that Legendaries have currently. Again, if you want to hand out Legendaries to the majority of the playerbase, the discussion’s at an end.

Ursan.7846:

John Smith.4610:

Fiontar.4695:

John Smith.4610:

As soon as you begin referring to luxury goods as an inflationary issue I start skimming instead of reading. Within the last hour I’ve specifically said that you’re mistaking inflation for what is not inflation. Precursor prices aren’t changing due to inflation.

They are providing the mechanism for exponential earning of wealth via the TP, which, yes, indeed is driving inflation.

I’m a bit busy for the moment, can someone step in and explain why this isn’t true please?

Certainly John.

In a MMO, you have gold taps and gold sinks. Gold taps are what introduces gold to the economy, and gold sinks are what removes gold from the economy.

Examples of gold taps are gold drops from mobs, selling items to vendors, etc. You’re creating gold out of nothing essentially, and adding it to the game’s economy.

Examples of gold sinks are waypoints, repair costs, and TP listing fees. They remove the gold out of the economy.

You have inflation is gold taps outweight the gold sinks. Players are creating more money than destroying it. Hence there is more gold around in the in-game economy, gold becomes more worthless, and prices in general of EVERYTHING goes up. That is inflation.

But trading on the TP is NOT creating gold. In fact, with the listing fees, it’s doing the exact opposite. Every time a precursor is sold, a chunk of that gold is removed from the game. Yes, people are getting wealthier, but on the flip side someone just lost all that gold. The net gain in the game’s economy is negative, since gold was destroyed.

TL;DR: Trading over the TP is a gold sink, not a gold tap, cannot cause inflation.

Directly I agree, but indirectly they are adding to demand thus creating more desire to farm. Ergo…traders indirectly influence inflation.

RoyalPredator.9163:

No Asian IP should access EU or NA registrated accounts. Autoblock.

That might be a bit much, and bordering on racism, but it gave me an idea…

Why not offer players an option to region-lock our accounts so that they can’t be accessed from other countries? Then if we decide to move or travel, we could turn it off temporarily, and re-lock it once we’re settled again. It could save a lot of accounts from being stolen.

Since this game is designed for common players, and nearly giving nothing for hardcore ones, its complicated. It took weeks of thinking, and special designed dungeons with solo parts are a good start. WvW kills also, it shows off how much time you spent on the battlefield. Achievements also gives you opportunity to show off your worth – not mutch, but a lot of little makes a big.

One legendary planned for each character you really max out, but with some methood, you can save things you need, so less character you need to top out. When you “gathered” everything from your chars, and yet, you want an another Legendary item, you have to buy a new char slot from GEMstore.

@EnemyCrusher: Not bad idea! Thats exactly I’m talking about

EnemyCrusher.7324:

RoyalPredator.9163:

No Asian IP should access EU or NA registrated accounts. Autoblock.

That might be a bit much, and bordering on racism, but it gave me an idea…

Why not offer players an option to region-lock our accounts so that they can’t be accessed from other countries? Then if we decide to move or travel, we could turn it off temporarily, and re-lock it once we’re settled again. It could save a lot of accounts from being stolen.

Gold sellers use proxies

Prices are as high as people are willing to pay, if u think its too much then stop buying them, prices will drop when who ever is controlling them starts losing money.

Ursan.7846:

RoyalPredator.9163:

Hey John. There are the solutions:
1st & best: ALL items, including legendary weapons should earned with skill and by completing challanges. Don’t force players to grind, farm and buy gold for it.

People keep on saying this. “Legendaries should be about skill and challenges, not money!”

Like, how do you do this while still retaining the rarity of a legendary? You can’t, unless you make it impossible for the MAJORITY of the player base to attain because they lack a certain “skill.”

Unless you propose a system which ends up in everybody obtaining a Legendary. Then there is no point is there?

This is not at all hard to do, you just make it a massive time commitment. RNG (and the resultant extreme monetary cost) is not the only way to provide scarcity. Most people who don’t care about something terribly much aren’t going to put in 6 months of work to acquire that something. You could put precursors in as 300+ Laurel rewards, and remove them from the RNG, and the rate of legendary construction would go down, despite being open to more people. And given how Laurels work, that would definitely count as “skill and challenges”. Now it’s not a very epic system, and the system should be epic, but a scavenger hunt system that works on a similar principle of fixed or relatively fixed time costs would maintain scarcity while allowing for more casual progression; instead of never being able to afford ever rising costs that you can’t keep up with, you’d instead have a very long term goal that may or may not be worth it to you to bother with, but would at least be obtainable with persistent effort.

See also: Champion of the Gods title is far rarer than the number of people who have played both GW1 and GW2.

I’d quickly add that ordinary market forces don’t apply in a game they way they do in a real economy. The risks for market manipulation and manufactured inflation have no real world consequences for the speculators and the manipulators. There are no laws to break and the gold they accumulate is a score with no real value.

Who does pay the price? The ordinary players and the publisher. Players who find it takes more and more time playing the game to earn the gold needed to buy what they want/need and the publisher, who loses the income from people who become frustrated with the ever increasing effort needed to get by and just quit the game.

No real mouths to feed. When the “working class” of a game community gets fed up, they can just completely walk away from the game.

The manipulators aren’t going to care if they kill a game, it’s all just a score and there will be other games they can move onto if their egos need to be satiated by the ability to make imaginary money.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Since this game is designed for common players, and nearly giving nothing for hardcore ones, its complicated. It took weeks of thinking, and special designed dungeons with solo parts are a good start. WvW kills also, it shows off how much time you spent on the battlefield. Achievements also gives you opportunity to show off your worth – not mutch, but a lot of little makes a big.

One legendary planned for each character you really max out, but with some methood, you can save things you need, so less character you need to top out. When you “gathered” everything from your chars, and yet, you want an another Legendary item, you have to buy a new char slot from GEMstore.

@EnemyCrusher: Not bad idea! Thats exactly I’m talking about

What, you have to do one solo dungeon run specifically designed to be solo-able, some WvW kills, and some achievements? And that every player should have at least one legendary?

So I guess we aren’t working under the assumption that we want to retain the current rarity of Legendaries then.

Nebilim.5127:

This would be true if gold sellers couldn’t produce precursors. Do you know how much exotics do we need to trow in the forge to get a precursor? I remember some guilds making experiments, and you need about 80~200 exotics. So we have now a company capable of farming/botting thousands of T6~T5 mats, ectos and the rest of the crafting recipes to make an exotic greatsword, and all they need to do is just throw them out in the forge and make an item that cost 600 gold, is very desirable and high in demand and thrice the valor what they would probably spend buying the necessary items.

So you made a legendary/precursor. Tell me how there is now more money in the system? There is a new legendary/precursor, but this is not gold. If you want to sell it at the tp someone else has to get the 2k gold ( or whatever ) together. Even if you craft 100 legendary/precursor the amount of money in the game would be the same. (Probably even less since you won’t have farmed all items and thus used the tp which removed 15% of gold as tp-fee )

Fiontar.4695:

Well, let me quickly explain why it is an issue.

It is really not practical to earn the money for a precursor through ordinary game play. You might get lucky and have the RNG Gods shine down on you, getting one precursor you can then sell to fund a large portion of the cost to purchase the one you do desire. However, the only way most people will be able to afford a precursor is to either buy the gold from a gold seller, or play the TP for profit.

People playing the TP for profit start small and build their wealth over time, being able to step foot into more and more lucrative markets as they go. Raw cost is not always the determination of most profit. A precursor may provide the most profit for a single sale, by far, but those sales can be few and far between. Active, hive volume markets can be very lucrative due to volume.

The higher the price of precursors goes, the more out of reach those items are to players who actually play the game, rather than play the TP. This drives more players to either buy gold from gold sellers, play the market for profits themselves, or just quit the game in frustration.

The goal of being able to afford the most expensive items on the TP, either for personal use, or as “an investment”, likely drives a large portion of inflation at all levels of the game.

The inflation we are seeing is largely due to the concentration of wealth into the hands of the few. Most players playing the game are not earning more money, they are just seeing the time it takes to earn the money to buy their leveling gear and level 80 exotics take longer an longer.

Inflation in the game is mostly driven by those playing the TP for profit, with the “market cap” increasing as ordinary players bite the bullet and buy things they need at higher prices and with longer intervals between purchases.

The highest price items just allow for those most successful at playing the market to earn more and more money doing so. Those players don’t stop playing and manipulating the commodity markets. They do, though, eventually reach an amount of wealth that allows them to easily manipulate the market on commodities and necessities.

The biggest hedge against such levels of manipulation was to be the “global” nature of the TP. Surely the markets would be too big to be manipulated by an individual? Well, goods selling for well over 20G have given them the mechanism for earning the wealth needed to eventually manipulate the global markets.

There a limit to how many orders a non-cheating trader can execute in a day. If the richest markets were ordinary exotics and T6 mats, that limit on how many orders a player could successfully manage would limit the rate of growth of TP “business”.

Precursors and other high priced items make levels of wealth accumulation practical that would not be practical otherwise. Don’t forget, they also provide the incentive for players to stop playing the actual game and start playing the TP, as well as for players to buy gold or pre-cursors from gold sellers. The highest price items fuel the behaviors that lead to inflation and these pressures can not be solved via ordinary money sinks, as those money sinks really only effect people playing the actual game, not those botting for gold or playing the TP for profit. It becomes a vicious, inflationary cycle.

You are mistaking increasing demand for rare items for inflation. Wealth consolidation does not cause inflation. Inflation is a measure of change in the value of currency (in this case gold), not the value of rare high demand items; it’s only really affected by the volume of gold in the economy, and the TP removes it. If enough players start playing the TP instead of the game it would eventually deplete gold stock in the economy, leading to deflation and a drop in price levels. TP trading only moves money around, it does not create it.

There are other factors you’re not examining too; if wealth were evenly distributed across the entire player base tomorrow, the cost of precursors would go down, but the cost of cheap and commonly traded materials would go up.

John Smith.4610:

Couple of problems though:
1. Players control that market

Point 1 is simply not true. Sorry, but it’s not.

Anet determines the drop rate of any item.
Anet determines the TP fee.
Anet determines how many uses there are of the item.
Anet determines if there are alternatives for an item.

Saying that the players drive prices is simply incorrect. Players base their supply & demand on parameters that Anet sets.

Yay. I’ll be out of this conversation for a while. I want to watch 007Skyfall.
Note: I’ll share my works in this forum as soon as I finish. I’m about to.
@ Eolirin: Yes. They planned to be hours to complete, like most of the dungeons and even the new types and designs for them. It won’t be a 20 minute rush, but a 3-5 hours of wonderful adventure.

@ Kartelling teams: May Arenanet should flood the market with their logical and fix prices. If they upload 10k of each precursor in like 500 gold, all the players MUST underbid it. I think they know exactly what worth what. Esp CJ.

@ Ursan: No. Dungeons you must do with a great team, but in some cases, you have to go solo for a bit. And not. Not every player should have a legendary. Just those who worth it by proving it.
Don’t worry. I’m working on it for a year or so.

@ Fiontar: We should have more quantity and quality gold sinks. High WP costs. No armor repair fee (or mutch less). I got heavy reasons why. Then, we should spend daily income on nurnishments and boosters, funny things, little Gemstore stuffs. This economy should handle some education.

Tallis.5607:

John Smith.4610:

Couple of problems though:
1. Players control that market

Point 1 is simply not true. Sorry, but it’s not.

Anet determines the drop rate of any item.
Anet determines the TP fee.
Anet determines how many uses there are of the item.
Anet determines if there are alternatives for an item.

Saying that the players drive prices is simply incorrect. Players base their supply & demand on parameters that Anet sets.

By the way, if you actually read the context of that post, you’ll realize that he’s talking about the gem/gold conversion.

And no, players do set the prices. Is it influenced by Anet’s decisions? Of course. But it’s the players who’ve decided that ectos should be worth 30s, not Anet.

Tallis.5607:

John Smith.4610:

Couple of problems though:
1. Players control that market

Point 1 is simply not true. Sorry, but it’s not.

Anet determines the drop rate of any item.
Anet determines the TP fee.
Anet determines how many uses there are of the item.
Anet determines if there are alternatives for an item.

Saying that the players drive prices is simply incorrect. Players base their supply & demand on parameters that Anet sets.

Those are indirect factors at best and ineffective at worst; Volcanus is not more expensive than other Mystic Forge exotics because it’s mechanically different from them, or because it has uniquely difficult to acquire material costs. Glacial Lodestones are not cheaper than Charged Lodestones because they’re massively easier to acquire. The high end of the market is driven almost entirely by player desire for certain visual aesthetics and none of that is directed by anything Anet has gone out and deliberately set.

Eolirin.1830

You are mistaking increasing demand for rare items for inflation. Wealth consolidation does not cause inflation. Inflation is a measure of change in the value of currency (in this case gold), not the value of rare high demand items; it’s only really affected by the volume of gold in the economy, and the TP removes it.

No, inflation is not only affected by the volume of gold. It is also affected by demand. Stuff get more expensive when people demand it more.

Take for example a character that makes -say- 5g per day.

The first x days after hitting 80, the character buys useful things like exotic armor & weapons, fancy food and superior runes.

This drives the prices of those things up. Plain and simple. More demand. The character may have the same amount as before, but when all players are all after the same x items (say Superior runes of Divinity), the price go up.

Sure, you need more gold for prices to rise. But it is certainly not the only factor.

.

Also… for an economic forum, few people here do not ask the most fundamental economic question: where does Anet gets their money?

They get their money from (only) two sources: selling games to new people and selling gems to existing players.

When prices of items, like dye or superior runes or exotics, are too high for people to grind for the gold, Anet makes money because a certain % of people will buy gemls to convert to gold.

And THAT is why prices are so high.

Not because players make them so high.
Not because of gold hording.

But because Anet sets the parameters for these prices (they determine the droprates, they determine the uses, they determine the altrnatives) and it is in Anet’s intrest to have prices high enough that people buy gold with gems.

Personally, I do not have any problem with Anet manipulating the prices of items, to maximise their own income. Someone has to pay the bill for this great game!
I fully understand that a company needs to make money and since they only have two sources to make money03
It is perfectly reasonable that they ensure that they make money with gem-to-gold converters.

But it is odd that most people that post economic theories here on the forums do not take the most basic economic law of the game into account: Anet needs to make money.

Ursan.7846:

But it’s the players who’ve decided that ectos should be worth 30s, not Anet.

Well, let’s see…

Anet decided how many Ectos ‘drop’.
Anet decided how many uses there are for Ectos.
Anet decided how many alternatives there are for Ectos.

So, for me, it is clear that Anet certainly helps to determine the price of Ectos.

Tallis.5607:

Ursan.7846:

But it’s the players who’ve decided that ectos should be worth 30s, not Anet.

Well, let’s see…

Anet decided how many Ectos ‘drop’.
Anet decided how many uses there are for Ectos.
Anet decided how many alternatives there are for Ectos.

So, for me, it is clear that Anet certainly helps to determine the price of Ectos.

Did you read my post? Of course Anet influences the prices of items. They created the kitten game.

They still don’t SET the prices for goods however. The players decide that they like/does not like Visions of the Mists. The players decide whether things crafted with ectos are worth it or not. They are the ones setting the price. You see ectos selling for 30s? That is not because Anet decided, “hey lets price ectos at 30s.” You see that number because the players have decided on it, through their purchasing/selling.

RoyalPredator.9163:

@ Eolirin: Yes. They planned to be hours to complete, like most of the dungeons and even the new types and designs for them. It won’t be a 20 minute rush, but a 3-5 hours of wonderful adventure.

I think you missed my point. Fixed time costs are not “you have to do X dungeons that, under ideal conditions without you having figured out super efficient ways to complete them may take you a few hours”. Not only would that be really bad, as a mechanic, because it forces a long time commitment right now and thus excludes anyone who cannot sit at the game for that much time straight, your time estimates will always be off, and there’s nothing that stops a player from completing all of your content in a very short period of time. It also cuts against the play how you like design philosophy of GW2, because you’re forcing players into Dungeon content and into soloing, so it’s extra bad for this game.

What I’m talking about are things that, because of mechanical constraints, are mathematically impossible to complete in less than some number of months. There is no way to acquire laurels faster than one per day, ten per month. And so if something is priced at 100 laurels, like the cat tonic, there is no way to acquire it without having completed somewhere between 70-100 dailys and 0-3 monthlys. That cannot be accomplished in less than 2 months, and somewhat closer to 3, period. And that’s a dedicated 2-3 months. You have to play pretty much every day to do it that fast. If you play very casually, you can build up enough points over a longer span of time, but it’s still going to be a pretty big time commitment. The important thing though is that you have a track that you can chip away at so that there’s a sense of progression and progress, but only a little bit every day, so that getting to the end takes a really long time.

This has the added benefit of getting people to play more frequently, as there’s something for them to work on every day, and missing a day means lost progress. And to stay in keeping with GW2’s overriding philosophy, you also want these tasks to be more obtainable and something that can be done in multiple different areas of the game; you should be able to make noticeable progress in an hour or less, and it should be open to dungeon runners, people in the open world, and wvwers equally.

I have an idea, what if we moved all bots into a faction permanantly stuck as hostile to everyone, that way we could kill them for loot and slow them down/stop them

Tallis.5607:

No, inflation is not only affected by the volume of gold. It is also affected by demand. Stuff get more expensive when people demand it more.

Take for example a character that makes -say- 5g per day.

The first x days after hitting 80, the character buys useful things like exotic armor & weapons, fancy food and superior runes.

This drives the prices of those things up. Plain and simple. More demand. The character may have the same amount as before, but when all players are all after the same x items (say Superior runes of Divinity), the price go up.

Sure, you need more gold for prices to rise. But it is certainly not the only factor.

I think you’re misunderstanding what the term “inflation” means. Inflation is the erosion of purchase power of currency. In this case, gold. If demand for certain items increase, their prices will rise but not because of inflation. Just because certain items rise in prices =/= inflation.

I think the OP had a question about if you guys are going to be doing anything about the very high price of precursors and phrased it as a form of TP manipulation.

So can you answer that question John? I don’t care if someone is saying the wrong thing or making wrong assumptions

I, just like the OP, want to know if/when you are going to do anything about the rarity of precursors

John Smith.4610:

Several people on these forums have pointed out why this isn’t true. Mainly, the assumption that this is profit maximizing behavior is false.

Oh, I didn’t even get to the ’’maximising’’ part :-)

I won’t go as far to say that GW2 does the same thing as SWTOR. Or LOTRO. Or Skyrim.

In SWTOR they have a specific job (I saw the job posting, it is a REAL pity that I didn’t -save it, it would be an eye opener) for someone to maximise profits from the ‘gem’ store.

Someone who’s job it is to classify players into categories (like ‘likely to pay for cosmetic items’, ‘likely to pay for utility items’, ‘not likely to pay’) and then market items spcifically towards these people.

I would not dare to say that Anet maximises profit by doing the exact same thing as every company does, because I have no proof of it. I’ll take your word that Anet is such a nice company that they do not want to maximise money from the players.

There are even arguments NOT to maximise money income, because people do not like to be used as cash cows.

But saying that Anet doesn’t watch at all how many gems they sell that get converted into gold and act accordingly… sorry… I am not so gullible to believe Anet doesn’t change things to make more money with gems-to-gold people.

It pays your bills. You’re not working for a charity organisation.

Tallis.5607:

No, inflation is not only affected by the volume of gold. It is also affected by demand. Stuff get more expensive when people demand it more.

This is not correct. Inflation is an aggregate measure, and does not care about the price of any given individual good per se, but about trends in the pricing of aggregate goods. High demand items will increase in price, but the economy as a whole cannot increase in price unless the volume of gold increases. Inflation is about the economy as a whole. Inflation is not “this thing costs more” – a number of things can cause that to happen – it’s “money is not worth as much as it used to be”.

Tallis.5607:

Ursan.7846:

But it’s the players who’ve decided that ectos should be worth 30s, not Anet.

Well, let’s see…

Anet decided how many Ectos ‘drop’.
Anet decided how many uses there are for Ectos.
Anet decided how many alternatives there are for Ectos.

So, for me, it is clear that Anet certainly helps to determine the price of Ectos.

The argument is easily refutable when you take in account of time spent farming for these. There are people who spend more time than others in “creating” these than others, thus giving us our global supply. As far as demand, it is up to the individual to decide what they want to use those for or if any at all. If you project this on a massive global scale than you get ectos for approx 30 silver per.

Tallis.5607:

Oh, I didn’t even get to the ’’maximising’’ part :-)

I won’t go as far to say that GW2 does the same thing as SWTOR. Or LOTRO. Or Skyrim.

In SWTOR they have a specific job (I saw the job posting, it is a REAL pity that I didn’t -save it, it would be an eye opener) for someone to maximise profits from the ‘gem’ store.

Someone who’s job it is to classify players into categories (like ‘likely to pay for cosmetic items’, ‘likely to pay for utility items’, ‘not likely to pay’) and then market items spcifically towards these people.

I would not dare to say that Anet maximises profit by doing the exact same thing as every company does, because I have no proof of it. I’ll take your word that Anet is such a nice company that they do not want to maximise money from the players.

There are even arguments NOT to maximise money income, because people do not like to be used as cash cows.

But saying that Anet doesn’t watch at all how many gems they sell that get converted into gold and act accordingly… sorry… I am not so gullible to believe Anet doesn’t change things to make more money with gems-to-gold people.

It pays your bills. You’re not working for a charity organisation.

I think what John is saying is that it does not maximize Anet’s profits to behave in the way being described, not that Anet doesn’t do things to generate income. That is, Anet is not deliberately making precursors and other high end items cost more gold to encourage gem sales; they do market gemstore items to encourage gem sales, but deliberately manipulating the economy so that high demand items cost large amounts of gold isn’t something that would maximize their profits and isn’t something that they do.

Tallis.5607:

John Smith.4610:

Several people on these forums have pointed out why this isn’t true. Mainly, the assumption that this is profit maximizing behavior is false.

Oh, I didn’t even get to the ’’maximising’’ part :-)

I won’t go as far to say that GW2 does the same thing as SWTOR. Or LOTRO. Or Skyrim.

In SWTOR they have a specific job (I saw the job posting, it is a REAL pity that I didn’t -save it, it would be an eye opener) for someone to maximise profits from the ‘gem’ store.

Someone who’s job it is to classify players into categories (like ‘likely to pay for cosmetic items’, ‘likely to pay for utility items’, ‘not likely to pay’) and then market items spcifically towards these people.

I would not dare to say that Anet maximises profit by doing the exact same thing as every company does, because I have no proof of it. I’ll take your word that Anet is such a nice company that they do not want to maximise money from the players.

There are even arguments NOT to maximise money income, because people do not like to be used as cash cows.

But saying that Anet doesn’t watch at all how many gems they sell that get converted into gold and act accordingly… sorry… I am not so gullible to believe Anet doesn’t change things to make more money with gems-to-gold people.

It pays your bills. You’re not working for a charity organisation.

I think you’re missing John’s point. He’s not saying Anet is not trying to maximize profit. (of course they are.)

He’s saying that prices are high not because Anet is trying to maximize profit.

Grazingcattle.1627:

I think the OP had a question about if you guys are going to be doing anything about the very high price of precursors and phrased it as a form of TP manipulation.

So can you answer that question John? I don’t care if someone is saying the wrong thing or making wrong assumptions

I, just like the OP, want to know if/when you are going to do anything about the rarity of precursors

That has been discussed before by some of the moderators (sry I do not have a link available). There has been some talk about starting a scavenger hunt like event for them. As far as I know, there has not been anything more discussed about it than that. Personally I think that there will be some “unveiling” in the next couple of months over this, but again, that is just my speculation.

Ethros.1453:

Grazingcattle.1627:

I think the OP had a question about if you guys are going to be doing anything about the very high price of precursors and phrased it as a form of TP manipulation.

So can you answer that question John? I don’t care if someone is saying the wrong thing or making wrong assumptions

I, just like the OP, want to know if/when you are going to do anything about the rarity of precursors

That has been discussed before by some of the moderators (sry I do not have a link available). There has been some talk about starting a scavenger hunt like event for them. As far as I know, there has not been anything more discussed about it than that. Personally I think that there will be some “unveiling” in the next couple of months over this, but again, that is just my speculation.

That’s correct, but the system is still in the design, not implementation, phase, so it’s likely going to be more than a couple months, given their general desire not to talk about stuff until it’s close to done.

Yes. The cost inflation of “luxury” items does indeed incentivize behaviors that then directly lead to inflation.

However, it’s more than that. Speculators can and do cause prices of goods being speculated on to increase due to the artificial demand created by those same speculators. The greater the wealth accumulation by the wealthiest players, the greater those players have the ability to manipulate the prices on the TP.

There have been numerous examples of real world markets that have been manipulated by speculators to levels that have nothing to do with consumer demand and consumers end up paying more for those commodities than they would if there were no speculators manipulating the markets.

As I stated previously, it’s worse here because there are no real world pressures to keep prices in check. Ordinary players can either grin and bear it, become speculators themselves, buy gold or quit the game. None of that effects the speculators and manipulators and even if things should reach a critical mass due to a player exodus from the game, causing the in game markets to collapse, they don’t lose anything other than imaginary money.

Inflation in this game is not because ordinary players are earning too much money. The same can be said about the US economy. Lower and middle income earners have seen wage stagnation or deflation over the past decade or more, yet real inflation has been increasing steadily. Ordinary Americans are not driving inflation, they are just getting by with less and less for every hour worked.

The same thing is happening in GW2.

When players that play actual game content see their earning rate remain stagnant, while the price of goods increases rapidly on the TP, then there is something wrong with the economy. When players feel they either need to play the market for profit or buy gold just to afford to play the game, there is something wrong with the economy.

The 15% “tax” on TP sales and the listing fee are gold sinks, but it’s still a much lower “tax” than in game gold sinks impose on players who actually play game content to earn currency. Not only can you earn a lot more money per hour playing the TP than playing game content, but you get to keep a much higher percentage of your earnings.

Scarcity just increases inflation. It isn’t a hedge against inflation. It also creates the environment for speculators and manipulators to earn the currency needed to truly demolish the economy.

Tightening supply of costly goods just rewards speculators, while making life more difficult for people just trying to play the game.

Centrally managed economies have no place in the real world, but if you are going to have a full time economist running your in game economy, that’s exactly what you would want. Tuning of supply, (and money sinks), to ensure that prices remain in a narrow range and limiting the opportunities for speculators and manipulators to push inflation.

I can see the value of a game that is an economic simulator, but that is not this game and the current economics of GW2 seem destined to eventually ruin the play experience of many players, seemingly just to preserve the right of the few to enjoy the role of market profiteers.

Fiontar.4695:

snip

I feel like you still don’t understand inflation in an MMO economy. Inflation will only occur when gold taps outpace gold sinks. Players farming more is offset by players buying these “luxury” items at a higher cost (more listing fees). Rising prices of luxury goods will NOT cause inflation. You can argue until your face is blue, but you’ll be still wrong.

As many people said ad nauseum in this thread, tracking the prices of a few high-end luxury items is NOT indicative of “inflation.” No buts, ifs. It is NOT.

Lets look at prices of random goods that aren’t luxury items.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/155

Remarkably steady since November.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24818

Remarkably steady, except a drop in prices recently. But hey, that’s the opposite of “inflation!”

If there was somehow widespread “inflation” in this game’s economy, you’ll see the prices of EVERYTHING rise. Because it’s the purchasing power of GOLD that is suffering.

Also please stop bringing in the real-world economy. These two economies have VAST differences. You can’t compare one to the other.

I was honestly interest at buying some gold from a gold seller at one point… Then I got hacked and learnt first hand how they get their money. Not only did I lose my account for a week, but lost over 400g worth of pure gold and items. I was a day or 2 away from buying my precursor but by the time I got my account and items back, the market has inflated at a rate that I can’t possibly match.

It sickens me that the same people who stole my account and got me banned are also associated with many of the people manipulating the market ATM.

Oh and btw, I now have no more desire to buy gold from them ever and avoid association with anybody who I know that do. I wish I knew what these people did to get their gold before I ever considered buying from them.

As a general player, one who does fractals and likes to WvW, gets his dailies done and someone who knows jackkitten about econimcs (boring classes in undergrad and grad) stuff is just really expenive. I was looking into making a corrupted bulwurk and lodestones cost 1. odd g?! I mean cmon that’s just rediculous. It’d be nice to make a cool looking weapon but eff that price, that’s all my money, I’ll just subject myself to the RNG and farm fractals for weapon skins.

Folk.2093:

As a general player, one who does fractals and likes to WvW, gets his dailies done and someone who knows jackkitten about econimcs (boring classes in undergrad and grad) stuff is just really expenive. I was looking into making a corrupted bulwurk and lodestones cost 1. odd g?! I mean cmon that’s just rediculous. It’d be nice to make a cool looking weapon but eff that price, that’s all my money, I’ll just subject myself to the RNG and farm fractals for weapon skins.

This is really due to lodestones, like precursors, being stupid rare. I think there’s a very legitimate argument that the supply of these items is much too low.

Ursan.7846:

Fiontar.4695:

snip

I feel like you still don’t understand inflation in an MMO economy. Inflation will only occur when gold taps outpace gold sinks. Players farming more is offset by players buying these “luxury” items at a higher cost (more listing fees). Rising prices of luxury goods will NOT cause inflation. You can argue until your face is blue, but you’ll be still wrong.

.

Yup many of us dont understand

We are for the large part MMO grunts not MMO economists

Our understanding is on the level of i killed 100 skrit yesterday and could afford 10 golden sheep with the drops today i kill 100 and can only afford one sheep what happened.

If you could explain one thing it would help me and perhaps others. Sorry to use a RL example but well its what i know. House prices in my area are 50% over what they were 5 years ago while inflation has been very low.
I see much the same with legendarys ok there is no "inflation " in the economy what do you call it when one section of an economy takes of like Usain Bolt with a habanero in his shorts while the rest of it is stable perhaps if we were all using the same terms people would be less confused.

Gold sellers need to get their gold some where. A lot of it is via gold farming and not all gold farming is botting. The demand for gold is needed for there to be a business for gold farmers to tap. Before the game’s launch, the $$$ for Gem for Gold exchange was touted as a way to decrease the demand for gold seller’s business. On paper, that sounded good. If players could pay a few bucks to get their exotics a little faster, they would be more likely to do so via the gem store, rather than risking a ban doing business with a gold seller.

This goes off the rails when the cost of level 80 exotics, precursors and other high end items completely outstrips the ability of players to afford them via normal game play or even via kitten to Gems to Gold exchange. Precursors specifically and all high end tradeables in general have increased the demand for illicit gold, which encourages gold sellers to do more farming, which pumps more money into the economy. Farmers aren’t playing to play. They aren’t earning to fund their own purchases. They are creating gold for gold sellers to sell.

The value of items and resources most available to “the ordinary player playing the game” have deflated, while items with enough scarcity and demand have allowed speculators to artificially inflate the prices of “luxury goods”.

I’m sorry that attempts at logic are labelled “diatribes” and that ideology trumps reason. MMO economies are not real world economies. How many game developers have tried to apply RL economic theory to their in game economies, only to have them self destruct under the weight of run away inflation? Pretty much all of them.

(Eve Online is, to a degree, an exception, because there is a mechanism for an economy of scale and the need for large corporations that “employ” players to earn profit for the greater organization).

Speculators and market manipulators are driving inflation on high end goods. These prices are much higher than one would anticipate based on “fair value” when considering time=$$$. These greatly inflated prices on the most expensive goods provides exactly the level of demand gold sellers need to make the game a title worth bothering with.

I don’t care what economic ideology you adhere to IRL, most of it needs to be tossed right out the window when considering how an MMO economy actually works, and much more importantly, how an MMO economy SHOULD work to ensure the game remains enjoyable and playable for the player base on the whole.

GW2 is not some laboratory where one gets to test out their economic ideology. It’s a game people play to have fun and when the economy starts to become a barrier to that for the majority of players, that is something that needs to be addressed.

cargan.5689:

Yup many of us dont understand

We are for the large part MMO grunts not MMO economists

Our understanding is on the level of i killed 100 skrit yesterday and could afford 10 golden sheep with the drops today i kill 100 and can only afford one sheep what happened.

If you could explain one thing it would help me and perhaps others. Sorry to use a RL example but well its what i know. House prices in my area are 50% over what they were 5 years ago while inflation has been very low.
I see much the same with legendarys ok there is no "inflation " in the economy what do you call it when one section of an economy takes of like Usain Bolt with a habanero in his shorts while the rest of it is stable perhaps if we were all using the same terms people would be less confused.

I’m going to assume you’re asking for an explanation on what inflation means in an MMO economy.

BTW, the concepts aren’t hard. You shouldn’t underestimate yourself, I’m sure you’ll understand the concepts after reading my explanation.

Ursan.7846:

In a MMO, you have gold taps and gold sinks. Gold taps are what introduces gold to the economy, and gold sinks are what removes gold from the economy.

Examples of gold taps are gold drops from mobs, selling items to vendors, etc. You’re creating gold out of nothing essentially, and adding it to the game’s economy.

Examples of gold sinks are waypoints, repair costs, and TP listing fees. They remove the gold out of the economy.

You have inflation is gold taps outweight the gold sinks. Players are creating more money than destroying it. Hence there is more gold around in the in-game economy, gold becomes more worthless, and prices in general of EVERYTHING goes up. That is inflation.

But trading on the TP is NOT creating gold. In fact, with the listing fees, it’s doing the exact opposite. Every time a precursor is sold, a chunk of that gold is removed from the game. Yes, people are getting wealthier, but on the flip side someone just lost all that gold. The net gain in the game’s economy is negative, since gold was destroyed.

TL;DR: Trading over the TP is a gold sink, not a gold tap, cannot cause inflation.

To be honest, I doubt its gold sellers causing the precursor issue. It’s those with a lot of money (players) that would horde such desired items and try to sell them for extortionate amounts of money.

Gold sellers aren’t stupid enough to discourage thousands of players from playing the game that’s making them a living because the nicest items are unobtainable, They wouldn’t put up items for money majority of players can’t spend. That doesn’t help their business.

I believe it’s largely the rich people providing the gold and items in exchange for real life money and also that they have horded precursors to craft into legendaries before the prices jumped up.

People leave games for these kind of reasons. Nobody likes that the hardest to get items are obtained almost entirely by gold and/or real life wealth and take over a year to realistically obtain by playing hardcore 24/7.

I hope Anet realizes that currently nobody can get that kind of money except for the trading post rich people (or the rare lucky people). 99% of the current population in the game cannot realistically get a legendary for a long long time if they start now. A good year or so just for a precursor alone (The lover being 700g for example).

Legendaries should be more about playing the game less about gold… a lot less. Please consider pushing the whole scavenger hunt idea. I have a legendary because I got lucky and had help and even I think this is ridiculous. Make an alternative way through playing the game to get such items.

A legendary shouldn’t take more than 4 months of hardcore playing to get or 8 months casually.

Fay.2735:

A legendary shouldn’t take more than 4 months of hardcore playing to get or 8 months casually.

Obtained Sunrise after 2.5 months of playing =) Did not play the tp but bought items from there like charged lodestones ( No drop-luck ) and t6-mats. And I did nothing special: Fractals, Normal Dungeons, a bit orr and while doing that I finished a lot of achievments ( all jumping puzzle for example :P ) .
Oh and also never used any reallife-money.

Thanks for the reply Ursan i do understand “inflation” as a term what i am missing is the term for a single item break out. As Eolirin pointed out the market as a whole is not inflated just a few items or sections of it.

The non economists here have been calling this inflation which is incorrect if we had the correct term we could avoid some of the angst and allow us to get the conversation on a more productive track.

So after all the big words and comparing of wall street skills and terms what is being done about manipulation of pre cursors ? If you strip.everything away John you have a problem that the height of your moral highchair will never remove nor the t&c’s, people have been crying out for changes to precursor prices for the games life , and whether you like it or not by delaying this issue your pushing people to g sellers.you say you are after the sellers themselves but you are mearly putting plasters on saws you are not addressing the source of the problem or working on a cure. years of work art money everything has gone into this game and what a game it is but you are completely undermining its beauty allowing a minority whom look at nothing more than the mahogany behind the tp to put major hurdles up for those.who enjoy your work the most.

Gonna switch back to the topic with the following suggestion:

Make all precursors only drop after completing the Mad King Clocktower on hardmode (simply with a timer that’s 10 seconds less). With all the people complaining that there’s no skill involved in making Legendaries, this should teach them all a lesson.

The issue with market manipulators is that they make the game worse for everyone else.

Market manipulators do not create inflation – they do not add gold to the economy. They do cause an artificial increase in prices, though. Due to two reasons:

• They don’t need to “buy low and sell high” as if the price were out of their control; they are not stock market operators trying to guess how the stock is going to change. No, they can buy all entries of some products and offer them at higher prices, effectively creating a “high” at which to sell. " Flipping" items like this is not limited to precursors.

• They concentrate wealth. Due to the DR system, grinders cannot make a quick fortune in a short time, which is great. But the TP does not have this kind of restriction. As a result, market manipulators can take the gold already in the economy, and move it from the hands of many players to the hands of a few players (the manipulators themselves). Those few players are then able to pay higher prices for desirable items (not only precursors) than everyone else, effectively driving prices up.

The result is a combination of bad wealth distribution (TP players have more gold than everyone else) and artificial demand for desirable items (which are being flipped by the TP players). The former is something very common in the economy of third world countries, but something less strong in developed countries. In the end, we are left with TP manipulators increasing prices of many items way beyond the reach of the other players.

Is this fun?

Nozdrum.2894:

Obtained Sunrise after 2.5 months of playing =) Did not play the tp but bought items from there like charged lodestones ( No drop-luck ) and t6-mats. And I did nothing special: Fractals, Normal Dungeons, a bit orr and while doing that I finished a lot of achievments ( all jumping puzzle for example :P ) .
Oh and also never used any reallife-money.

The first 3 months gaining legendaries was still doable. However if you started now you wouldn’t be able to do it in 2.5 months is the point I’m making. Granted I agree it shouldn’t be as easy as it was at the beginning but it’s taking things too far now.

As I said it should be doable by playing the game normally between 4-8 months depending on how casually you play. I think that’s quite reasonable. Compared to what now would be about a year or more just for the precursor. Especially since they keep increasing in price.

Also have to keep in mind that every part of getting the legendary is now more expensive than the first 3 months though hopefully with the new things T6 mats won’t be quite as bad.

On the topic of Precursors and Legendaries, I feel that Legendaries are something that every player should have the chance to achieve within reasonable effort during their lifetime in GW2. (My frame of reference is that a casual player who plays an hour or two each day should be able to gain a Legendary within a year or two. I understand that Legendaries are intended to be a long-term goal, not something a player earns within a few months.)

I’m not advocating that a Precursor be handed out at the end of the Personal story, but perhaps one should be handed out as a reward for doing ALL of the following:

1. Complete your Personal Story
2. Complete at least 20 Slayer achievements
3. Defeat a number of unique bosses throughout the game world (the Shadow Behemoth, the Fire Elemental in Thaumanova Reactor, the Blood Witch, the Champion Karka in Southsun Cove, the three Dragon champions, among others)
4. Complete the Weapon Master achievement in the weapon of your choice

After all that is complete, you travel to the Dominion of Winds where you are granted an audience with a Tengu Elder Sensei, who challenges you to a special duel (instanced, so you have to do this alone). Defeat her, and she deems you worthy to wield a Precursor weapon that matches the Weapon Master achievement you have completed.

I think all that would be worthy of granting a player a Precursor, and it would be a lot more memorable (and fun!) than simply grinding gold in the TP or throwing items into the MF.