Guild Wars 2

Guardian.5142:

Thank you for your answer. Can you clarify the difference between a commodity exchange and an auction house?

Commodity exchanges have standardized lots – there are no unique and special items as you would find in an auction. Every Carrion Short Bow on the TP is exactly the same as every other Carrion Short Bow, so only the price matters when deciding which one to buy.

In the Diablo 3 auction house, for example, every item of the same type, rarity, and level can have different stats, which makes it a lot more difficult to arrive at a price consensus. That’s why allowing time limited bidding makes the most sense in games with those kind of item systems. It’s a way to gather information on the value of an item that can’t be directly compared to an item that has sold before.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Guardian.5142:

Thank you for your answer. Can you clarify the difference between a commodity exchange and an auction house?

Commodity exchanges have standardized lots – there are no unique and special items as you would find in an auction. Every Carrion Short Bow on the TP is exactly the same as every other Carrion Short Bow, so only the price matters when deciding which one to buy.

In the Diablo 3 auction house, for example, every item of the same type, rarity, and level can have different stats, which makes it a lot more difficult to arrive at a price consensus. That’s why allowing time limited bidding makes the most sense in games with those kind of item systems. It’s a way to gather information on the value of an item that can’t be directly compared to an item that has sold before.

OK, I get that, but then wouldn’t WoW’s auction house be really a commodity market. And I think Aions, SWTORs… They all work because you break out individual sales as objects and stackable items have “price per unit”, so there’s a common ground in uneven stacks. GW2 TP just combines all of one type of item into a long thread of items set at reducing prices for greater supply and increasing prices for greater demand…. right?

LordByron.8369:

“we don t want you to grind in order to prepare to have fun”…..

… and you don’t have to.

mtpelion.4562:

My opinion is that the game does not utilize the TP enough. There are far too many Account Bound ingredients for my taste.

I actually agree, it can’t truly be claimed to be a free market with so many account bound items.

Guardian.5142:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Commodity exchanges have standardized lots – there are no unique and special items as you would find in an auction. Every Carrion Short Bow on the TP is exactly the same as every other Carrion Short Bow, so only the price matters when deciding which one to buy.
(snip)

OK, I get that, but then wouldn’t WoW’s auction house be really a commodity market. And I think Aions, SWTORs… They all work because you break out individual sales as objects and stackable items have “price per unit”, so there’s a common ground in uneven stacks. GW2 TP just combines all of one type of item into a long thread of items set at reducing prices for greater supply and increasing prices for greater demand…. right?

Well those other games have more variability in items than GW2 – you can add enchantments to items in WoW, SWTOR has some items with augment slots that can be empty or filled with different levels and types of augments, etc. I didn’t play enough Aion to be that familiar with the item system, but I expect there is a similar issue. There’s too much variability to not treat each listing as a unique item listed by a particular seller. The items in GW2 are well defined enough that you can easily enumerate all possible variations of an item. For example, there’s a limited number of runes and there’s a fixed number of slots on weapons and armor that they can be put into.

The design of the trading system also impacts it – WoW’s auction house has auctions, where folks compete to be the highest bidder on a particular item. Even if I have exactly the same item I want to sell as the one being bid on, I can’t look at the high bidder and say “I’ll take that price” and sell my item to him or her. In a market, all sellers and all buyers of a commodity are directly competing against all other sellers and buyers for that commodity, which makes the pricing more efficient than competition limited to a particular sale of a particular item.

It’s the difference between selling a rare coin in a certain condition at auction, and selling a futures contract to deliver 12,000 lbs of grade AA butter on May 15, 2015 on a commodities market. Lots of folks could sell that butter contract, but there aren’t many folks that would have that particular coin in that particular condition.

I have a feeling I’m not explaining it very well – maybe someone else can help.

Look at it this way: The game is meant to be played in a variety of ways, and the trading post exists so that you can easily acquire the gear/material to facilitate the type of game you want to play.

Looking at it in this vein, the free and large trading post is actually very beneficial. If you want to WvW, you can use it to sell bags and buy gear. If you want to farm mats, you can use the TP to sell those you don’t need, whereas if you like to craft, you can use the tp in lieu of farming and as a market to sell your crafted goods. If you like dungeons, you can use the TP to pick up potions and unload drops. If you like world events, same deal.

While there are certainly side effects to a unified and lightly regulated trading post, in aggregate it’s so beneficial to most players in that it improves the way they want to play GW2. I think this is the lens through which JS and others thus see it.

Pandemoniac.4739:

snip

I have a feeling I’m not explaining it very well – maybe someone else can help.

Actually, I think you did just fine. I played WoW for 6 years or so and never saw much irregularity like you used in the Diablo refererence. There were some rings, but, if you wanted X named purple sword, it was the same sword. The only thing that changed was vertical progression and MUCH later on the transmog stuff. Enchantments are just runes and sigils.

I get what you are saying about the differences between the TP and the AH, but I really can’t help but wonder if a TP works for mats/parts/bulk items and an AH works better for equipment and skins. I mean, Eternity used to be 2k. Now its over 3k and the other ones keep on rising. The game has actually seen nerfs towards farming mats, so what else could possibly be pushing up endgame prices? People being forced to grind or play the TP for what they want? The value gained from flipping has to come from somewhere, right?

Thank you, everyone, for the explanations. You know, I just had a thought. If precursors were bought from a vendor for 500G or required exalted reputation from two months worth of dailies, I’d probably consider it a worthy goal to hit over time. If you had a much better chance from the completion chests of dungeons or a Teq run to get one, I’d be playing the content with the hope that one day something would drop for me. Even paying 500G to a player who got really lucky from kicking a baby skritt wouldn’t really be all that bad.

Its the fact that the people in this game are allowed to avoid all playable content, sit in Div reach or Ebon and exploit the market at every turn, causing prices for everything to be inflated and moving the goalposts ever away from the casual gamers…

It just hurts my feelings.

Seriously, you don’t let human nature dictate anything you want to stay nice and that includes the economy. You let human nature control things when you want dirty, underhanded exploitation and a persons value (or maybe just their gaming experience in this case) is turned into dollar signs. That… might also be part of the problem here. :P

There might be some merit to putting the really high end stuff like the legendaries into an auction type interface instead of the commodities interface. I know that D3 had a different interface for selling/buying gems because it made sense. Maybe the inverse would make sense in GW2 where there are a few items that aren’t treated like commodities.

On the other hand, auctions have their own problems especially in a cross server market as large as the one in GW2. If folks think it’s hard to get their buy order filled because of folks over-bidding by one copper the second they put one in, I shudder to think of the auction sniping angst we would see. The folks that have the time to sit and constantly monitor their bids will still have an advantage over the folks that don’t.

Guardian.5142:

Its the fact that the people in this game are allowed to avoid all playable content, sit in Div reach or Ebon and exploit the market at every turn, causing prices for everything to be inflated and moving the goalposts ever away from the casual gamers…

I think your perception of the effect that flippers have on a market is incorrect. They don’t inflate prices – the competition among the traders brings prices in line with what the item is really worth. High prices are actually good for the folks that generate the supply – players get more gold for the stuff they find when prices are high. The folks that really drive prices out of the reach of casuals are the hard core gold farmers. The more gold they generate, the less gold is worth, and the more gold it takes to represent the true value of something. The trader doesn’t make money unless someone buys what they’re selling. If no one had thousands of gold to spend on a legendary, they wouldn’t cost that much.

The problem is that while item X is worth say 10 hours of play for the hardcore farmers, that value in gold might represent 100 hours of play for someone more casual. That is going to happen in every game where there is a mix of hardcore and casual players. I think the real problem is that there aren’t many medium term goals (in terms of gear) for the casual players to work toward. Either it’s really easy to get something or it takes a prohibitive amount of time.

There is cultural armor of course, but that’s not to everyone’s taste. There’s the dungeon armor that you can get with tokens. There’s ascended accessories with Laurels. There’s karma armor, but the highest tier stuff is gated behind the temple events, and I was really disappointed that the skins were all the same.

Haaa this seems fun. Let me drop my little wall of text aswell real quick.
Disclaimer: I am not an economist, I use my personal view and logic to come to the conclusions presented in this post

• Is Farming less rewarding then playing the TP?
  You can’t just say yes to this question. There is more to it then just putting a gold/hour stamp on everything. How much you make while farming is only tied to your farming locations and the average gold/hour of it. On the TP you don’t get a steady gold/hour income. Let’s have a competition.
  Competitor Steve tries to farm 500g.
  Competitor John plays the TP until he has 500g.
  Steve googles GW2 farming locations, goes farming for about 8g/hour. 65 hours later he has finished farming and has 500g in his pocket.
  John has farmed only 6.5 hours to get 50g so he can start playing the TP.
  John googles “make money on TP” and discoveres Flipping. An hour later he has discovered various helpful webpages and spreadsheets. He find’s an Items that’s promising and invests his 50g in buyorders. Half an hour later he has 45g because he got screwed by other flippers who are more experienced then he is. He spends another 4 hours reading and analyzing the market. He starts flipping low profile low reward items for the next 53 hours and luckily ends up with 500g. Just in time to call it a tie.
  Now Steve is mad at John because John got the same amount of money in the same amount of hours without putting in any “real” work…

• Will gold inflate to infinity?
  No. The TP itself prevents that from beeing possible. The more value players generate through loot the more value will be in the TP. The more value is in the TP the more gold will be destroyed through trading.
  It’s simple. Let’s say every farming player generates around 7.5g/hour worth of value. Most of it goes through the TP at least once. If it doesn’t go through the TP again, it usualy get’s taken out of the economy by making it account bound or consumed. If it goes through the TP again the value is cut down by 15% everytime it goes through.
  If you put enough value into the TP then these 15% cuts will get high enough to completely negate the vlaue that is brought into the game by the farmers. This is the point where further inflation is no longer possible.

• Is inflation hurting common farmfolks efficiency?
  Yes, but it’s not as bad as you might think. Even if we reach the previously described point of maximum inflation, you will still be able to get a good amount of money, because the only thing that will be almost worthless is the direct gold and silver reward that you get in loot. That 1s30c will still be the same amount then. However, all the unidentified dyes, rares, crafting materials and minis that you get will be of roughly the same value compared to all the other items out there that they are now.
  And by the way. Maybe when max. inflation is reached it will be worthwhile to look for the item needed yourself instead of buying it off the TP.

Edit: the [spoiler] bb-code is broked.

There just should be way more accountbound skillbased rewards like SAB Tribunal Weapons or liadri. Than I woulnd’t care at all about those guys with several legendaries. I don’t have 1 legnedary after 4k hours playing and having all LS ahievment , and done every dungeon + Fractals to scale 81 and having 30k + wvw kills… The Problem is that there are way to less rewards that are not RNG or can be bought by rich guys. They should just implement more rewards that are fix for certain achievments / playing achievments and I don’t care if the guy next to me walks around with 4 legendaries … but as they are the best item to have it is kinda annoying to not beeing able to get em while playing the game.

Vigorato.7951:

I find your example interesting Juno because in an efficient market you would expect exactly that to happen – prices to rapidly move so that the margin shrinks down close to zero. In that respect, flippers do increase market efficiency.

Great response — I went back and looked at my example from your perspective, and yes I have to agree! I still found the experience frustrating, but I can’t argue on the efficiency point.

A buy order fee would restrict what happened in my example, thereby preserving the inefficiency (or margin between buy and sell orders). I will have to scratch that off of my list of desired TP enhancements.

I’m still for time duration limits on sell orders (unless I can get an insightful counter point like Vigorato’s — something more than “prevents investments, figure the rest out on your own…”).

juno.1840:

Vigorato.7951:

I find your example interesting Juno because in an efficient market you would expect exactly that to happen – prices to rapidly move so that the margin shrinks down close to zero. In that respect, flippers do increase market efficiency.

Great response — I went back and looked at my example from your perspective, and yes I have to agree! I still found the experience frustrating, but I can’t argue on the efficiency point.

A buy order fee would restrict what happened in my example, thereby preserving the inefficiency (or margin between buy and sell orders). I will have to scratch that off of my list of desired TP enhancements.

I’m still for time duration limits on sell orders (unless I can get an insightful counter point like Vigorato’s — something more than “prevents investments, figure the rest out on your own…”).

Ask yourself the questions: “How much does the increased efficiency benefit the market?” and “Who does that efficiency mainly benefit?” Then weigh the answers.

Essence Snow.3194:

juno.1840:

Vigorato.7951:

I find your example interesting Juno because in an efficient market you would expect exactly that to happen – prices to rapidly move so that the margin shrinks down close to zero. In that respect, flippers do increase market efficiency.

Great response — I went back and looked at my example from your perspective, and yes I have to agree! I still found the experience frustrating, but I can’t argue on the efficiency point.

A buy order fee would restrict what happened in my example, thereby preserving the inefficiency (or margin between buy and sell orders). I will have to scratch that off of my list of desired TP enhancements.

I’m still for time duration limits on sell orders (unless I can get an insightful counter point like Vigorato’s — something more than “prevents investments, figure the rest out on your own…”).

Ask yourself the questions: “How much does the increased efficiency benefit the market?” and “Who does that efficiency mainly benefit?” Then weigh the answers.

While we’re on the topic of “efficiency”, we should really be asking ourselves how much “efficiency” we really want. You know, with all those automated interactions that appear to be the norm these days amongst the major TP traders?
TP notifiers. TP scripts to analyze profit margins. TP scripts to analyze profitable crafting on the fly. And of course, worst of all, automated and/or remotely controlled buy orders. But hey, let’s just pretend that’s not being done on a massive scale. Silence is golden, right?

something more than “prevents investments, figure the rest out on your own…”

That sounds like a good, catch-all reason. The high-volume investors help the economy survive shocks (i.e., constant fluctuation of supply/demand). With time-limited listings, and (probably) no refund on the listing-fees, the economy would probably lose a great source of stability.

For example, Cinnamon Stick is top-supplied at 5million. If a 2-week listing duration was implemented, 4million could very possibly just de-list and be vendored/trashed. After another 2 weeks, as long as there’s no reason to specifically speculate into its use, you might only have 300k on there. Eventually, if ANet decides to increase its demand, the supply is no longer there to absorb the sudden shock. Now, what if that happened to Silk in the many months prior to its eventual increase in demand?

Now, consider someone that finally made a Legendary, but wanted to sell it. They cough-up roughly 100g to list it, but are continuously faced with competition until the listing expires. Happy person? ;P

There’s also the case of server-side stability. For quite some time into its release, the TP could barely sustain the traffic. I’m not sure of its capabilities now, but handling a massive amount of additional listings and their expiration would undoubtedly increase stress. And for what?

Throughout these forums the term “efficiency” has been used to describe the margin between buy and sell orders. TP flippers live in the inefficiency of the market.

Nobody is asking for more time-efficient tools to place buy and sell orders (except maybe increasing the max quantity above 250).

The automated tools available right now ruin the TP experience imho. If I was a ardent flipper then maybe I would disagree and feel the tools are a necessity.

ah, how i miss the material and rare material trader, now that is a stable market.

Vol.7601:

Apolyon.6937:

…and while this may be good to the community as whole, it is not that good for the players as individuals.

• The drop rates for quality items are too low.
• Dungeon tokens become outdated due to ascended gear.
• Mastering crafting disciplines used to be something for everybody, now is hardcore zone.
• Legendaries… enough have been said about them.

The masses are driven to FS champion train or dungeon speed clears.

The TP is integral to the game and is vitally important for a modern-based MMO. Without the TP, you would have to resort to many other gold sinks in game. How would you like a 50s repair bill for each piece of armor? Fixed WP costs of 10s each? WvW queue fees?

Regarding your comment on quality items being too low, well, why do you think they are considered quality? It’s because they are rare and infrequent drops. If everyone could get 100 Charged Lodestones in an hour, do you think we would be using that item as a basis of comparison for a quality item? No. It would be worthless. And even then, if Anet were to increase drop rates by 5-fold, this would result in the desired item crafted from it losing value. Anet could then increase the amount required, but we would be going in circles.

Master crafting is called that for a reason. It could be cheaper, but I don’t mind each discipline costing at least 100G to master.

What about legendaries?

What you say is true. However, one aspect that is missing from this is the standard of living (quality of life?). Having rare, unique items, only affordable to a minority is not a society/game people want to be in, except to the ultra rich.

So, what we need is value created. Say provide more options for players. For example, have more variety in weapons, say non-legendaries, with lower crafting requirements. We have those, just provide more. Increase the richness of the system.

For armor, provide alternate ways to get ascended armor.

Etc…

This standard of living can only come from the game developers, who create the art, assets, experience. The TP can still be used, as it provides liquity, and servers as a market (maker?).

Someone on this forum once made an interesting suggestion. What if mobs didn’t drop items at all? Monsters only drop coin and crafting materials; all items in the game come from either NPC vendors (karma or coin), or from PC crafters, with most of the unique skins in the game only available through PC crafting. (Instead of purchasing dungeon weapons/armor, for example, the vendors instead sell crafting recipes. So if you wanted, say, an AC greatsword, you’d need to either run the dungeon a few times to get the tokens to learn the recipe and craft it yourself, or you just buy one from another player who’s crafted one with certain stats and put it up for sale.)

Good idea unless you despise crafting. Yes it’ll make crafting viable as an income source, in theory but you know there’s going to be a segment of players who crafting is anathema and so is waiting for something to become available from a crafter.

I don’t think the anti-crafter in your example above would have to wait long though. The TP shows that the GW2 market is VAST indeed. If you could post buy requests at a reasonable price, you can bet a crafter would be along to fill it very shortly.

And again, this is purely for skins. Players could buy generic-skinned Exotic weapons from high-level NPC vendors for coin or karma if they’re that impatient or just don’t care about looks. At the same time, perhaps certain dungeons/Fractals/activities can also reward specific skins that can be applied to an existing weapon, which allows dungeon runners etc. to work for their own skins.

Maestria of Strat.2974:

What you say is true. However, one aspect that is missing from this is the standard of living (quality of life?). Having rare, unique items, only affordable to a minority is not a society/game people want to be in, except to the ultra rich.

If everyone could afford them, they wouldn’t be rare. I’m perfectly content to allow the hardcore their legendaries and other such things I will never have the patience to farm for or the desire to pay that much real money to get.

Maestria of Strat.2974:

So, what we need is value created. Say provide more options for players. For example, have more variety in weapons, say non-legendaries, with lower crafting requirements. We have those, just provide more. Increase the richness of the system.

I do agree that it would be good for there to be more things in game that have a fixed price in different currencies (gold, karma, laurels, dungeon tokens, etc.) I think we have enough materials and gear to keep the TP engine humming along. What we need are more options for the folks with less time to play to choose to work toward.

I’m thinking of more things like the pirate cultural weapons at the end of Sharkmaw or the Ebonhawk weapons. Items with a particular flavor that wouldn’t necessarily outshine the harder to acquire items, but would still be cool.

The mystic forge items seemed like something for me to go for at first, and then I looked at the required materials for many of those recipes and it was daunting for someone like me that has a really low tolerance for farming. I’d love to see some more recipes halfway between Ambrosia and Lidless Eye that have very few (or none at all!) of the randomly dropped rare materials that I would most likely have to buy off the TP.

Ideally, an hour of play would provide roughly the same amount of gold equivalent, no matter what content you decide to tackle.

I think the failure of the economy, for individual players, in GW2 is that there are farming locations and routines that are so much more profitable for time spent that materialistically driven players become a slave to those repetitive grinds.

The game’s economy becomes balanced to those specific grinds, which makes other players feel their time spent playing is not considered equal. It also means that when a particular farming opportunity is nerfed, it doesn’t discourage farming, it just further limits the options of what and where to farm, further narrowing the scope of repetitive game play for those who get stuck in the farm/grind trap.

I see this as a particular failure for GW2 because it was supposedly not meant to be this way. Pre-launch, we were presented with the ideal that your play choices would be near infinite, because no matter how you played the game, you would feel rewarded. This ideal was pushed to the point that we were told that level and loot scaling would allow a level 80 player to do much lower level content, because a zone or content was something they liked or enjoyed and that the loss in earning efficiency would not be more than 15% vs. concentrating on the highest level, most challenging content.

If the game’s economy were actually balanced that way, specific, limited farming options would be the refuge of those obsessed over achieving ultimate efficiency, even if the reward for their narrow focus was only a 15% greater rate on return for time spent playing.

Instead, these farming grinds have become absolutely necessary for anyone who takes end game power/prestige goals seriously and wants to attain them with reasonable time and effort. What may take a determined farmer three months of grind would take someone playing a broad scope of content years and years to incidentally accomplish. That’s just plain wrong and not the game as idealized prior to launch.

I think this is very detrimental for any MMO, but the fact that Arenanet realized this, planned to combat it, yet here we are today with just as narrowly focused end game grinding as any other game signifies this as a particularly sharp failure.

Game play mechanisms are in place to support the ideal where higher character level just means access to more and more enjoyable and rewarding content. Only, the “rewarding” part of the equation has failed to support the ideal.

The narrow focus on Living Story content has played a big role in the emptying of the game world and the wasting of most of the world’s content, but the management of the economy may have had an even bigger role. It has made development of most of the game’s content extremely inefficient on the return of player time spent playing vs. developer time spent developing.

There is nothing wrong with the TP. In fact, it is a necessary ingredient for supporting the ideal. The problem is the massive disparity in reward vs. time spent playing for various element’s of the game’s content. The game has become carrot/stick centric, to the great detriment of the broader game world. Players may vary to the degree with which the carrot is important, but the carrot is made so desirable that even those who normally don’t worry too much about the carrot begin to feel that their game time is not only very lightly valued vs. the time of hardcore farmers, but the message is clear that Arenanet wants them to focus on farming and forget the other 99% of the game’s content.

;tldr

The game, it’s content and systems where designed around the ideal that no matter what content you chose to play, the rewards would be roughly similar, with maybe a 15% increase in earning potential for focusing on specific end game content. Reward for time spent, rather than reward for time spent playing very specific content.

In reality, the economy has been managed such that higher end content is much more rewarding than a broad spectrum approach to game play and specific, narrow farming grinds are much more rewarding than broad spectrum play focused on all level 60-80 content.

A number of carrots have been introduced into the system that are unattainable through broad spectrum game play, difficult to attain even through broad use of higher level content and most realistically obtainable only through grinding very specific content ad nauseum.

This is extremely detrimental to the game, provides a very poor return on investment for most of the game’s content and it is only this way because it has been deliberately set up this way, not because it is a necessity of MMO design or the design of this game specifically.

@Fiontar, longest tl;dr i’ve ever read.
There will always be people smart enoth to make others work for them and have more gold then 99% of the game population. As long as those people exist you cannot expect there to be an Item that’s got prestige and accessible to almost everyone. Actualy that would be a pretty accurate definition of an item that is the exact opposite of prestige.
As for the broad approach vs the narrow approach: If you have certain goal then it is very inefficient to never commit to the most effecive way to your goal.
I even disagree on the statement that only highlevel content is rewarding enoth to grind. People are running champtrains in queensdale. And I’m certain that there are absolute great farmingspots/eventchains in the game that could be exploited even harder then frostgorge if only enoth people would be around to scale them up.

Fiontar.4695:

Ideally, an hour of play would provide roughly the same amount of gold equivalent, no matter what content you decide to tackle.

I think the failure of the economy, for individual players, in GW2 is that there are farming locations and routines that are so much more profitable for time spent that materialistically driven players become a slave to those repetitive grinds.

I don’t know how you could possibly make all types of play all yield the same gold rewards. I spent a whole lot of time collecting ingredients to discover cooking recipes, with no thought whatsoever to how that time spent was impacting my income. Should I have made the same amount of gold that someone who was trying to make gold would have made? Doesn’t seem fair that I could fart around and someone else could work at it and we’d end up with the same rewards. I know you were probably thinking dungeon runs versus WvW or whatever, but hey, crafting and exploring is content too.

A lot of players like mindless farming. I can’t stand it, but there will always be the player that is very goal oriented, willing to withstand a lot of tedium to achieve that goal, and derives a lot of satisfaction out of playing that way. A hardcore farmer will find the most efficient way to farm. You can put in DR, you can nerf the farming spots, you can add Champion mobs, and they will always find new spots and new ways to achieve their goals.

The only way you can balance the scales is to have a parallel track where the value of the goals aren’t market driven. There are some things like that already in the game, but there isn’t enough variety in my opinion.

Fiontar.4695:

Ideally, an hour of play would provide roughly the same amount of gold equivalent, no matter what content you decide to tackle.

I think the failure of the economy, for individual players, in GW2 is that there are farming locations and routines that are so much more profitable for time spent that materialistically driven players become a slave to those repetitive grinds.

The game’s economy becomes balanced to those specific grinds, which makes other players feel their time spent playing is not considered equal. It also means that when a particular farming opportunity is nerfed, it doesn’t discourage farming, it just further limits the options of what and where to farm, further narrowing the scope of repetitive game play for those who get stuck in the farm/grind trap.

.

Idk how you managed to leave playing the tp out of there as farming, grinding, and regular playing are all fairly well balanced compaired to it.

Essence Snow.3194:

Fiontar.4695:

Ideally, an hour of play would provide roughly the same amount of gold equivalent, no matter what content you decide to tackle.

I think the failure of the economy, for individual players, in GW2 is that there are farming locations and routines that are so much more profitable for time spent that materialistically driven players become a slave to those repetitive grinds.

The game’s economy becomes balanced to those specific grinds, which makes other players feel their time spent playing is not considered equal. It also means that when a particular farming opportunity is nerfed, it doesn’t discourage farming, it just further limits the options of what and where to farm, further narrowing the scope of repetitive game play for those who get stuck in the farm/grind trap.

.

Idk how you managed to leave playing the tp out of there as farming, grinding, and regular playing are all fairly well balanced compaired to it.

For playing the TP you need to invest time and gold for the others you just need time.

Wanze.8410:

For playing the TP you need to invest time and gold for the others you just need time.

You mean continuous gold investment? As the others require an initial investment.

Not once have I seen any concrete reason why the imbalance is there. There has been a lot of scuttling around the fact, but never any direct reasoning.

Essence Snow.3194:

Wanze.8410:

For playing the TP you need to invest time and gold for the others you just need time.

You mean continuous gold investment? As the others require an initial investment.

Not once have I seen any concrete reason why the imbalance is there. There has been a lot of scuttling around the fact, but never any direct reasoning.

The imbalance is there because of human nature. Even in GW there were players making a lot of wealth from trading in Spamadan. The TP in GW2 makes this form of trading more efficient than in the original game, and therefore more lucrative in terms of time vs reward, but I’ve yet to see a concrete proposal for TP regulations that meet the following criteria:

- has minimal to no impact on how the majority of the playerbase is able to interact with the TP.
- does not overly restrict the supply of goods available on the TP.
- cannot be easily circumvented or alternatively, has a low enough cost associated with it, that it is generally not worth the effort to circumvent it.

Astraea.6075:

The TP in GW2 makes this form of trading more efficient than in the original game, and therefore more lucrative in terms of time vs reward, but I’ve yet to see a concrete proposal for TP regulations that meet the following criteria:

- has minimal to no impact on how the majority of the playerbase is able to interact with the TP.
- does not overly restrict the supply of goods available on the TP.
- cannot be easily circumvented or alternatively, has a low enough cost associated with it, that it is generally not worth the effort to circumvent it.

That’s because a free market does actually work. Other than some limited short term volatility as demand or supply is changing, it really is the most accurate way to determine what the real worth of something is to the general population at a particular point in time. Changing the price of something to other than it’s true worth has historically been a really bad idea.

Regardless, it isn’t the traders that are making the price of things go up. Regulate the TP all you want, there will still be folks in the Queensdale champ train and speed running dungeons generating gold faster than other players who don’t want to play that way. Nothing you do to the TP is going to prevent them from being able to pay more than the next player to get what they want when the supply is limited.

The only way to “fix” that reality is to have a parallel track for the folks that don’t want to play the money game. The TP is competitive, and it has to be to work correctly. Earning laurels or karma to buy items from an NPC vendor is not competitive and I think if there were more options along those lines the folks that don’t want to worry about how much gold per hour they’re making would be better served.

Zaxares.5419:

Someone on this forum once made an interesting suggestion. What if mobs didn’t drop items at all? Monsters only drop coin and crafting materials; all items in the game come from either NPC vendors (karma or coin), or from PC crafters, with most of the unique skins in the game only available through PC crafting. (Instead of purchasing dungeon weapons/armor, for example, the vendors instead sell crafting recipes. So if you wanted, say, an AC greatsword, you’d need to either run the dungeon a few times to get the tokens to learn the recipe and craft it yourself, or you just buy one from another player who’s crafted one with certain stats and put it up for sale.)

fyi this is the route that Camelot Unchained is taking. no dropped gear at all. everything of value is crafted. there’s even a dedicated crafter class!

Astraea.6075:

Essence Snow.3194:

Wanze.8410:

For playing the TP you need to invest time and gold for the others you just need time.

You mean continuous gold investment? As the others require an initial investment.

Not once have I seen any concrete reason why the imbalance is there. There has been a lot of scuttling around the fact, but never any direct reasoning.

The imbalance is there because of human nature. Even in GW there were players making a lot of wealth from trading in Spamadan. The TP in GW2 makes this form of trading more efficient than in the original game, and therefore more lucrative in terms of time vs reward, but I’ve yet to see a concrete proposal for TP regulations that meet the following criteria:

- has minimal to no impact on how the majority of the playerbase is able to interact with the TP.
- does not overly restrict the supply of goods available on the TP.
- cannot be easily circumvented or alternatively, has a low enough cost associated with it, that it is generally not worth the effort to circumvent it.

A multitude of methods could be used to meet those criteria except the last. The last one is not the right approach. We don’t base rules on whether or not the will be broken. We make them to distinguish between right and wrong. Make the rule based on it’s merit of being right, then enforce it via some punitive measures upon those that circumvent it….ie exploit.

Human nature..in this case greed is not really an appropriate reason for allowing the imbalance imo. It would be a better reason for fixing it.

Essence Snow.3194:

Astraea.6075:

The imbalance is there because of human nature. Even in GW there were players making a lot of wealth from trading in Spamadan. The TP in GW2 makes this form of trading more efficient than in the original game, and therefore more lucrative in terms of time vs reward, but I’ve yet to see a concrete proposal for TP regulations that meet the following criteria:

- has minimal to no impact on how the majority of the playerbase is able to interact with the TP.
- does not overly restrict the supply of goods available on the TP.
- cannot be easily circumvented or alternatively, has a low enough cost associated with it, that it is generally not worth the effort to circumvent it.

A multitude of methods could be used to meet those criteria except the last. The last one is not the right approach. We don’t base rules on whether or not the will be broken. We make them to distinguish between right and wrong. Make the rule based on it’s merit of being right, then enforce it via some punitive measures upon those that circumvent it….ie exploit.

Human nature..in this case greed is not really an appropriate reason for allowing the imbalance imo. It would be a better reason for fixing it.

There is no distinguishing wrong from right part of this equation, as there really shouldn’t be a huge morality issue driving the regulation of the game’s economy, but rather the needs of the game and the playerbase itself. That’s if you accept the premise that the TP needs to change to limit how much individuals can earn by “playing the TP”, which I’m not in agreement with btw.

In that context, adding regulations that don’t work because everyone can easily avoid them is not useful.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit.
I’ve already had a long post explaining why TP traders are good for the game as well as limited, if you haven’t seen it, you should look it up.

As far as other ideas like the GW2 economy has rampant inflation or there are other virtual economists online that don’t approve of this economy, that’s simply not even close to true.

If the current economy is paradise, then why is it one of the biggest reasons i’m not playing the game atm? Even if all you say is true, then why do I love the first 3 months economy, a lot more then the current?

And no inflation? What a joke. The same item takes crazy more effort to obtain, then near launch date. You are thinking like an economist. That is good, but only ONE SIDE OF THE COIN. You may think you have the other side covered but you don’t.

I challenge you, to now start with a new account 0 gold, no allowance to buy gems to farm a (popular) legendary. Like Sunrise. No special tricks allowed. No TP flipping tricks (that most of gw2 community don’t even know) allowed. Play as a casual, but one that has a good amount of time each day. Then come back and say ‘meh economy is fine’. You play the game to few to know it. I know legendary is supposed to be ‘hard to obtain’. But there are limits. Launch date legendary acquiring was ok. Shortly after (even with heavy price increases), it was still acceptable. Now? completely unacceptable. But keep telling yourself the other thing. And before the excuse ‘but you don’t need legendary’ kicks in, the part you require for it, are items that are broadly needed in other parts of the game, so farming the global ‘pack of items’ doesn’t only show how hard legendary is but also some very basic things. Like upping the 5 equipment masteries 350-400. You need very similar items as legendary to go that. So the ‘legendary ambition’ mirrors how hard simple things like this are as well.

There’s theory and there’s practise. You mastered the first but are mediocre at best in the 2nd. Your mastery in the first shadows your perception of how weak your knowledge of the 2nd is. And that’s to bad, cause the players get the short end of the stick.

At launch date and several times after I gave gw2/anet the advice: Don’t do anything like Rappelz did economy wise and you’ll be fine. The launch date rate was 100/100 for gw2 and 5/100 for Rappelz. With the time passing by we are at 60/100 now, and falling quickly. If you wait 3 more years you will about fall in the depths that game did (totally impossible to fix inflation, over the top price items, incredible gap for veterans to new players (new has almost no chance to keep up). It’s still good compared to other mmo’s not great. And this is from a veteran player experience, not a number cruncher (although I have a skill for that too). See this as whining all you want but most of my friends agree and i’m certain they are not making it up either.

The core (basis) of the economy is good. (see it’s not all that bad). But the details are not followed up, and widely ignored. And that makes the economy slowly degrade.

Pandemoniac.4739:

That’s because a free market does actually work.

Thats fine except the TP isn’t a free market.

Astraea.6075:

There is no distinguishing wrong from right part of this equation, as there really shouldn’t be a huge morality issue driving the regulation of the game’s economy, but rather the needs of the game and the playerbase itself. That’s if you accept the premise that the TP needs to change to limit how much individuals can earn by “playing the TP”, which I’m not in agreement with btw.

In that context, adding regulations that don’t work because everyone can easily avoid them is not useful.

I sorta beg to differ on this a bit. I feel that in this genre of game keeping the game populated is objective numero uno. Everything else must come full circle to that objective. Thus something that has such an effect on the masses that is imbalanced via a few is (in game terms) morally unjust. I would wager that a lot of the population is put off by such an imbalance seeing the reactions from things that are unbalanced to lesser degrees.

Avoiding many parts of the eula is exceedingly easy. Does that mean that it shouldn’t be there? Does it mean that any rule/law/ordinance that is easily bypassed is useless? If that is the case then most rules/laws/ordinances are wastes of time since they are easily avoided/broken/bypassed. I’m sorry I just don’t understand that reasoning.

I think someone is misremembering how difficult it was to scrape together 100g at launch. Yeah the legendary weapons were priced lower, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were more obtainable for casual players. By the time someone like myself could accumulate enough gold for last week’s price, a more industrious player accumulated 10x as much, and the price went up. Some folks might have been able to take advantage of the volatility when the market was still trying to figure out what such rare things were worth, but overall legendaries were still really expensive.

That’s just the reality of the market. The folks that want something enough to shift their time and energy away from other pursuits will always be able to pay more.

morrolan.9608:

Pandemoniac.4739:

That’s because a free market does actually work.

Thats fine except the TP isn’t a free market.

Eh, close enough considering how much of the economy is abstracted to work inside of a game. It’s not really realistic that much of the population’s income comes from killing other beings and robbing them of whatever they have in their pockets, but it works for the purposes of the game.

Essence Snow.3194:

Does it mean that any rule/law/ordinance that is easily bypassed is useless? If that is the case then most rules/laws/ordinances are wastes of time since they are easily avoided/broken/bypassed. I’m sorry I just don’t understand that reasoning.

Essence, you need to get out more …

I live in a country where 60 million people consider all rules/laws/ordinances to be ‘optional’ In fact, if you are not running a scam or breaking one rule/law or another, you are considered a fool.

Part of the reason why this happens is because there are too many rules/laws that people deem useless and/or not in their interest and the government does not have the resources or desire to enforced them all.

Essence Snow.3194:

Astraea.6075:

There is no distinguishing wrong from right part of this equation, as there really shouldn’t be a huge morality issue driving the regulation of the game’s economy, but rather the needs of the game and the playerbase itself. That’s if you accept the premise that the TP needs to change to limit how much individuals can earn by “playing the TP”, which I’m not in agreement with btw.

In that context, adding regulations that don’t work because everyone can easily avoid them is not useful.

I sorta beg to differ on this a bit. I feel that in this genre of game keeping the game populated is objective numero uno. Everything else must come full circle to that objective. Thus something that has such an effect on the masses that is imbalanced via a few is (in game terms) morally unjust. I would wager that a lot of the population is put off by such an imbalance seeing the reactions from things that are unbalanced to lesser degrees.

What effect does this have on the masses? I’m not seeing high levels of deprivation (in game terms) due to the wealth inequality that is presumed to exist due to the largely unrestricted nature of the TP. If those with wealth could use that wealth to interfere with other player’s enjoyment of the game in a significant manner, then it could be considered morally unjust.

Avoiding many parts of the eula is exceedingly easy. Does that mean that it shouldn’t be there? Does it mean that any rule/law/ordinance that is easily bypassed is useless? If that is the case then most rules/laws/ordinances are wastes of time since they are easily avoided/broken/bypassed. I’m sorry I just don’t understand that reasoning.

Sadly, there are a lot of bad laws and regulations passed by governments of all stripes around the world, and it’s not likely to stop any time soon. A subset of these are indeed widely ignored, circumvented, and/or unenforceable, and therefore do not achieve the intended aims.

Due to human nature (greed), if there’s profit in circumventing something, people will do it, so any proposed TP regulation needs to take this tendency into account or it is likely to fail to achieve the intended results.

Astraea.6075:

What effect does this have on the masses? I’m not seeing high levels of deprivation (in game terms) due to the wealth inequality that is presumed to exist due to the largely unrestricted nature of the TP. If those with wealth could use that wealth to interfere with other player’s enjoyment of the game in a significant manner, then it could be considered morally unjust.

Who do you think is paying taxes and profit for market flippers?

A thing is someone seeing some craftable good price is profitable, that buys basic mats and craft and resell.

Another is a player that sees a good has or will have high demand and insufficient offer, buy most of the offer creating more demand, and profit out of that.

See sigil of generosity, silk, skins, any luxury, celestial recipes item etc etc etc.

LordByron.8369:

Astraea.6075:

What effect does this have on the masses? I’m not seeing high levels of deprivation (in game terms) due to the wealth inequality that is presumed to exist due to the largely unrestricted nature of the TP. If those with wealth could use that wealth to interfere with other player’s enjoyment of the game in a significant manner, then it could be considered morally unjust.

Who do you think is paying taxes and profit for market flippers?

A thing is someone seeing some craftable good price is profitable, that buys basic mats and craft and resell.

Another is a player that sees a good has or will have high demand and insufficient offer, buy most of the offer creating more demand, and profit out of that.

See sigil of generosity, silk, skins, any luxury, celestial recipes item etc etc etc.

This happens even without a TP. I refer you to GW where players made profit flipping goods via map chat in Spamadan. The TP makes this sort of trading more efficient, but it also has almost no barrier to entry for new participants and (for most goods) the scale to ensure that any attempt at market manipulation is short-lived.

If they want this game to be fair they should intervene more often….
Flipping has almost no risk….
Stuff like the crystalline dust should be the norm to “balance the TP”…and with no anticipation…

Same for precursors….

So greediness equals risk…more reward means more risk….

Instead greedy flippers are tutelated in game development.
The risk is Always close to 0 and the reward is abysmal.

Its not the tp being regulated for players but currently TP is totally tailored for speculators….

bri.2359:

Essence Snow.3194:

Does it mean that any rule/law/ordinance that is easily bypassed is useless? If that is the case then most rules/laws/ordinances are wastes of time since they are easily avoided/broken/bypassed. I’m sorry I just don’t understand that reasoning.

Essence, you need to get out more …

I live in a country where 60 million people consider all rules/laws/ordinances to be ‘optional’ In fact, if you are not running a scam or breaking one rule/law or another, you are considered a fool.

Part of the reason why this happens is because there are too many rules/laws that people deem useless and/or not in their interest and the government does not have the resources or desire to enforced them all.

I am not following the backwards chaining as it’s origin is not pertinent to the situation at hand. I am further baffled by why so many believe it is acceptable basis of refute. Try to extrapolate that logic to other situations to see how well it works.

Essence Snow.3194:

bri.2359:

Essence Snow.3194:

Does it mean that any rule/law/ordinance that is easily bypassed is useless? If that is the case then most rules/laws/ordinances are wastes of time since they are easily avoided/broken/bypassed. I’m sorry I just don’t understand that reasoning.

Essence, you need to get out more …

I live in a country where 60 million people consider all rules/laws/ordinances to be ‘optional’ In fact, if you are not running a scam or breaking one rule/law or another, you are considered a fool.

Part of the reason why this happens is because there are too many rules/laws that people deem useless and/or not in their interest and the government does not have the resources or desire to enforced them all.

I am not following the backwards chaining as it’s origin is not pertinent to the situation at hand. I am further baffled by why so many believe it is acceptable basis of refute. Try to extrapolate that logic to other situations to see how well it works.

Of course it is not logical.
This is about human nature which is, as we all know, very far from being logical …

I want to know where you live that everyone considers laws optional. Now speeding laws I understand

Arnon.1563:

I want to know where you live that everyone considers laws optional. Now speeding laws I understand

I live in Italy ..

Arnon.1563:

I want to know where you live that everyone considers laws optional. Now speeding laws I understand

Pretty much anywhere you go.

Laws are things that are followed by people who wouldn’t have broken the law in the first place.

mtpelion.4562:

Arnon.1563:

I want to know where you live that everyone considers laws optional. Now speeding laws I understand

Pretty much anywhere you go.

Laws are things that are followed by people who wouldn’t have broken the law in the first place.

“Locks only keep out honest people.”

I haven’t been able to play the past week due to real life busyness but I’ve been thinking more about this topic. One of the main arguements for regulating the TP is that it allows for massive profits far beyond what is capable from other activities. If we ask ourselves why is this bad to the general gamer, the only answer I see is that it creates very high prices for luxury type goods.

What if Anet changed the way those were acquired or more specifically how they were created? Take some of the very rare exotic skins for example. You need a lot of gold to buy the lodestones and other mats available and you need a few skill points that you can only earn from playing the game. I would argue that these types of items should have a greater proportion of components needed earned from game play than can be bought. If we look at Mjolnir the only items it needs that must be earned through game play are 50 skill points and 500 Ascalonian Tears. You can buy the 100 Mystic Coins, the 350 Charged Lodestones, the 250 Ori Ingots, and the 250 Gossamer Bolts on the TP.

Instead, what if an item like this required 1 Bloodstone Shard (200 skill points), 50 Bloodstone Bricks (which operate as a gold sink for the Reagents, require karma for the Obby Shards, and an account bound mat drop), 100 Mystic Coins (could be bought or earned daily and only included to continue the trend of Mystic Forge items needing them), and XX (where XX would be a certain number of a certain item which determined the output item whether that is lodestones, ori weapon parts, t6 mats, etc.)

I am hesitant though to suggest something like 50 lodestones as the point is to change the focus from hard to gather mats like lodestones that are more easily purchased on the TP to something where the materials needed are not the money gate but the other components become the time/effort gate. A recipe like this greatly benefits players who spend a lot of time doing the core gameplay by allowing them to acquire desirable skins without the need for money alone. It also prevents players from focusing purely on the TP to acquire the luxury goods.

I could be way off in my reasoning but I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

JK Arrow.7102:

I am hesitant though to suggest something like 50 lodestones as the point is to change the focus from hard to gather mats like lodestones that are more easily purchased on the TP to something where the materials needed are not the money gate but the other components become the time/effort gate. A recipe like this greatly benefits players who spend a lot of time doing the core gameplay by allowing them to acquire desirable skins without the need for money alone. It also prevents players from focusing purely on the TP to acquire the luxury goods.

I could be way off in my reasoning but I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

After reading a lot of the discussion here I’m leaning toward this sort of thing as a solution too. Not necessarily replacing existing recipes, but adding more recipes for cool things that are weighted toward slow steady progress rather than hoping for lucky drops or grinding out gold to buy those drops from other players. Things that require skill points/karma/laurels to create so that the price of obtaining the item doesn’t change all that much with the market. The items wouldn’t be particularly rare, but I don’t care as long as they look cool. Ambrosia isn’t hard to make, but it’s a fun little focus skin for the right character.