Guild Wars 2

Mckeone.9804:

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m curious and perhaps John Smith could answer this if possible.

How many people have over 10,000 gold?
What’s the highest amount of gold that someone currently has?

Why does it matter? People with that much money probably don’t have any legitimate way to spend it, except on gems. There’s a practical limit on the ability to consume, particularly in this game, so gold has a sharply deteriorating marginal value. Assuming JS doesn’t allow people to manipulate markets (abuse of dominant position), there’s no harm in someone having and accumulating lots of gold.

The point I was going to make with his answers was that it’s a very small number of players that have accumulated that much. I’d say that it’s less than 100 but that’s pure guesstimation. Since it’s so few players that have that much in relation to the rest of the player base, why does it really matter that a few players can make a lot of gold off the TP?

@phys
You don’t understand that people who play on market earning lots of money do a lot of good for the community. They move money around trading post, giving needed items to people, and buying items that are not needed at the moment.

Although they store lots of gold in bank, they are still customers, giving money to sort of small crafters and farmers.
Rich people buy lots of expensive alcohol and fastest cars, but guess who picks grapes and mines iron. A single purchase of a luxury good might give jobs for hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

What I think what should happen is that players who do PVE/WvW stuff should keep doing what they’re doing, it brings goods and increases the availability of supply; as for those lazy people who prefer to have their money straight forward, its good to have them too for reasons of which I won’t discuss. As for those PVErs and WvWers who don’t know anything about TP flipping, to remain as they are until they learn about it; this is simply for the mere fact that we need them, and they need us.

Mckeone.9804:

What I find amazing is the extent to which this troll is being fed. The OP is either so parochial that he cannot grasp anything beyond “I don’t like that other people have something that I don’t have and don’t want to work for, so it’s bad” or is just being a deliberate troll. In either event, you can’t convince someone of something they don’t want to believe (or admit to, for trolls).

Based on the evidence, I don’t see any structural problems with the GW2 market/TP. It’s fair, it’s transparent, and anyone who cares about making money can put in the effort to research prices and take advantage of the fact that a large portion of the playerbase just wants to (a) cash out their drops right now and (b) not take on the risk of posting a sell order. This isn’t like Wall Street, where (a) you have privileged access to free money from the federal reserve and will get bailed out if you fail, and (b)to get access to Wall Street firms, you have to have the right ivy league school on your resume or family connection to get in the door. There are no barriers to entry and no safety nets if you make bad investment decisions. And if everyone cared about making money using the TP, no one would because margins would crash to zero.

Moreover, the whole thing about “dungeon runners should get better rewards because they have more skill” ignores that (a) dungeon running has no risk of loss and (b)would allow players to introduce currency into the game at an unlimited rate. In contrast, TP is a currency suck, which helps mitigate against monetary inflation.

I sincerely think that threads such as this should probably just be closed.

my guess is that these issues, even though they may not be as drastic as the OP was, keep coming up, and are a source of contention for a lot of players. Theres nor real point in burying the thread if another one will pop up next week.

As to your point about dungeon runners create items/rewards and have no risk that is a matter of game design which means, it can be changed, also the risk on the TP in order to profit is highly overated. It is greater than zero, but there are methods which will result in a strong net gain in money consistently. Also when you start talking about “risk” you need to start including time.
the big risk in dungeons, is time. A bad dungeon run? could take 20min to an hour
if the most basic activity pays 4 gold an hour, that means they are risking 4 gold to 1.3 gold with failed runs.
whereas time risked while TP trading?
lets say i go with high and low on soft wood, lowest price over last 24 hours was 1.05 silver, highest sell price is 1.41 silver, lets say i bought at 1.07 silver and sold at 1.39 i make 11 copper per sale, you make 27 silver per stack, to do do buy orders for 10 stacks and sell orders for 10 stacks takes about 2 minutes.

my risk in time is fairly small, for 2.7 gold return.

phys.7689:

my guess is that these issues, even though they may not be as drastic as the OP was, keep coming up, and are a source of contention for a lot of players. Theres nor real point in burying the thread if another one will pop up next week.

As to your point about dungeon runners create items/rewards and have no risk that is a matter of game design which means, it can be changed, also the risk on the TP in order to profit is highly overated. It is greater than zero, but there are methods which will result in a strong net gain in money consistently. Also when you start talking about “risk” you need to start including time.
the big risk in dungeons, is time. A bad dungeon run? could take 20min to an hour
if the most basic activity pays 4 gold an hour, that means they are risking 4 gold to 1.3 gold with failed runs.
whereas time risked while TP trading?
lets say i go with high and low on soft wood, lowest price over last 24 hours was 1.05 silver, highest sell price is 1.41 silver, lets say i bought at 1.07 silver and sold at 1.39 i make 11 copper per sale, you make 27 silver per stack, to do do buy orders for 10 stacks and sell orders for 10 stacks takes about 2 minutes.

my risk in time is fairly small, for 2.7 gold return.

You can’t compare the risk of “losing time” for a failed Dungeon run to the risk of actually losing money on bad investments. As an example, say a player purchased a Monocle when prices were 500 Gold, but a re-release dropped the value to 40 Gold. Yes this would be more of a speculation problem at its core, but since we’re talking TP and risk, this example still applies. As for more short term risk, say I purchased 10,000 pieces of Mithril Ore at 50c each, but prices dropped to 38c. I just lost 10,000 × 12c of net worth. For a Dungeon runner who fails a run, you just lost your time. As I stated on the other page of this thread, the Dungeon doesn’t take away Gold whenever you fail a run.

Now as for the issue of TP, and the negative feelings the OP and others have for it, John brought up good points in his post. These players simply don’t understand how American type free market systems work. But it’s hard to really educate them via in game tools or tip-bars. This is something you need to learn in school. Not everyone is familiar with business or economic talk, just as I’m not familiar with how to change a tire on my wife’s car (but at least I know how to pump my own gas!)

As an aside, I would really like to know if the OP is just anti-Capitalist because he doesn’t like rich people, jealous that he’s unable to be rich, or just wants in-game mechanics to benefit his play style over others. All his posts in this 10+ page thread could indicate all three.

this is still going on? I thought multiple points from the resident economist would have calmed things down

phys.7689:

Fenrir.3609:

Profit from dungeons scales with skill/knowledge. You can make very large amounts of gold per day from speedrun tours and path selling.

Which flies in the face of some of the arguments raised thus far. The gold you can gain from top end pve is more than enough to efficiently aquire luxury items. Moreover I would be interested to see people explain exactly how they are flipping out multiples of the amount you can make speedrunning/selling, on a regular, consistent, daily basis.

wanze just said he makes about 200 gold a day from buy orders. When i was trying to finish my legendary, i think i made about 60 gold a day from TP/merchanting/transforming items, and about 30-40 gold a day from pve, i spent way more time in pve than flipping.

The cap on dungeon direct earning is 36.5 and since dungeons primarily are good at awarding gold, they will scale poorly with inflation. The only way to not scale poorly is to offer some unique product. thats 25 paths, if each path takes an average of 10 minutes to beat(and move to the next one), thats 250 minutes, or 4 hours and 10 minutes or 8.37 gold per hour. you do make some more money in drops, lets say you make 10 gold an hour.
pretty skilled work, long hours
but from what i remember, selling everything(lowest seller), my calculations on frostgorge champ train was somewhere around 9 gold an hour. you arent really getting paid that well for that level of skill, except possibly in selling paths, and thats mostly because you are bringing something to market, even then i would love a breakdown of how long it takes you on average to solo the dungeon up to the boss (without exploits of course) and how long it takes to fill the party.

I was not a TP player of high skill, and i was beating highly skilled dungeon runners in earnings in less time, while i was at the same time making money from gold grind farms

Skilled dungeon play has a ceiling in rewards, and they cannot really raise it, because it currently would throw off other rewards, aside from path selling.

The current means of skilled dungeon play only track speed, they dont track deaths, they dont track what objectives you completed, and they dont track enemies killed, or quality of the enemies killed, it also doesnt track well to dungeon path difficulty. As a means of tracking your skill/success it is kind of shallow.

Aside from the gold awarded, the other items have little value attached (in general)

and just think, dungeons is probably the best awarded game activity aside from TP playing, that most scales in skill, just imagine the value of everything else besides it.

1. You didn’t refute the point that dungeons scale with skill really, I guess that is because they clearly do. They do also scale with inflation more than you seem to suggest given a large chunk of the potential rewards comes from non direct gold sources which are, wait for it, market driven.

Yes you can make a very large amount from open world faceroll farming as well, but that doesn’t alter that fact that player A who is doing dungeon speedrun tours and selling paths is going to be making a boat load more than player B in his lolPVT gear and pug groups.

That said, I would love to see dungeons improved and (for a change) not neglected.

2. I claimed that you can make more than enough from pve to afford luxury items. Your 30-40G a day backs that claim up if anything.

3. Again if someone is claiming to make 200G+ each and every day from flipping, or 60G a day from casual TP activities whilst pveing, well we are going to have to see some evidence to back up that claim.

Now I am 100% for rewarding skilled play, I would love new “hardcore” modes/content and ways of distinguishing the top players. That would be amazing. But let’s be honest here, yes you can make a large amount of gold via pve and yes, anyone who claims that “but but you can make like 1321230G per day from the TP and it is out of whack” needs to show evidence because it smacks of horse $%^*.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

That is what dungeon tokens are for. The various gift of (whatever) for 500 tokens are used to craft some of the coolest skins in the game including legendary weapon. I personally hate the grind game in every other mmo where to get gear you have to re run the same content over and over again, Gw2 has so far avoided that particular curse so far.

phys.7689:

Now the real issue i see, is one of incentives, and control of production.

One major factor is that TP earnings scale with skill/knowledge/investment noticeably better than other activities.

To make this less the case, you have to come up with systems that reward differently based on how skilled/invested you are in something.

You are still conflating “reward” and “profit from investment”. They are still 2 different things.

Vol.7601:

this is still going on? I thought multiple points from the resident economist would have calmed things down

I think its still going strong because this one is fun.

eithinan.9841:

That is what dungeon tokens are for. The various gift of (whatever) for 500 tokens are used to craft some of the coolest skins in the game including legendary weapon. I personally hate the grind game in every other mmo where to get gear you have to re run the same content over and over again, Gw2 has so far avoided that particular curse so far.

People will grind content if they want to regardless. It’s only a problem if they’re forced to grind to progress and improve. That’s where past MMOs got it wrong and where GW2 largely gets it right. Anyway, that’s beside the point.

Dungeon tokens do not address any of the points I raised. Dungeon tokens are account bound, which means we cannot sell them, and the output from those tokens is account bound, which again means we cannot sell them. Furthermore, regardless of demand, dungeon tokens are so easy to get that the only one which wouldn’t be merchant value is Arah, and even then not by much. There is too much supply of those tokens because the content is too easy. A much better example of what I am suggesting is the way GW1 handled the Domain of Anguish. The high demand coupled with difficult-enough content resulted in a great value for the gemstones you acquired. This rewarded people greatly for playing the game and being good at it, and also didn’t do anything to hurt the typical economy players. That is the ideal.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

So you saying that just bumping up dungeon rewards wouldn’t solve the problem because everything would stay the same, just on a higher level.
But we do have already that kind of revenue in the game. The traiding post flipping can offer the amount of gold you say would be unhealthy to the economy. It does affect less people because less people take the time to get good at flipping the traiding post, but the problem is already there. As I’ve said, I don’t want to stop traiding post flipping in general, even if I disagree with the stated “benefits” flippers offer to the economy, but I want to bring the revenue you can obtain through traiding post flipping on the same level as, lets say the rewards you get through dungeon running, just higher to make up for that great “risk” you take playing the traiding post.
I think Wanze’s idea is a good way to cap the revenue flippers can make, since they have to gather the karma first on order to get gold.

You keep missing the point. Unhealthy flow of gold in the economy is only, ONLY applicable when you are talking about new gold flowing into the game from rewards. The TP only redistributes that once it’s in the game. The fact that a few who understands that a lot of players aren’t willing to post bids and sell orders and profit on them, skimming a bit of that trading range difference is immaterial to a healthy economy because the damage is already done by opening up the gold spigots to those “playing the game”. It’s not Player A’s fault that Players B through Z aren’t willing to use the TP to maximize the sales of the items they don’t want or minimize the costs of the items they want to buy. Player A simply provides the service Players B through Z want, immediacy and if it costs more or pay less they obviously don’t care. So they are willingly giving that money to Player A.

And it doesn’t matter how much money or items Players B through Z get, a little, a lot, because as long as they continue to use the TP the way they are, Player A will be there getting a cut simply because he chose to use the TP as designed.

You want a “fix”? Eliminate the radio button selection between high bid and low sell order prices with a list of top/bottom 5 of each along with quantity at those prices and force every player to manually enter a price. And you know what, it probably won’t “fix” anything, just annoy players who want to dump their loot quickly on the TP.

John:

It is far simpler to explain (harder to fix).

It appears that the issue is simply defined by a couple factors:

1. What is the amount of effort (hours) to acquire an item? (If using TP, how much time did it take to get that cash)?
2. Did I do something enjoyable or unenjoyable representing that effort?

One of the key challenges right now is not the issue of there being too much money/too little money but of the enjoyment factor for many groups of customers on creating gold. If you WvW, for example, your acquisition of gold is noticeably lower than certain “gold farming” type activities.

This effectively makes the price of a good on TP feel like it is more and makes it feel like my effort/hours are being translated to profit for someone who already had too great of a benefit (the disparity between acquiring gold via PvE and WvW for example).

Thus, at the micro level it just feels wrong even if it looks good at a macro level.

In terms of communication, perhaps explaining the following would really help:

Is an hour of SpvP, an hour of WvW, an hour of crafting and an hour of PvE (open world or dungeons) equally profitable in terms of providing the gold necessary to acquire goods via trading?

If not, what is the difference?

Are certain playstyles then “double prejudiced” by initially having their “contributions” less recognized THEN having to transfer even more wealth to represent the profit of those styles of play they were hoping to avoid by the TP?

Assuming the hypothesis of the disparity of transferable reward (gold) being different per unit of effort (hour) across different playstyles is true, then. . . .

I would argue that there is a bit of an hour glass economy from what little I can gather. You have a segment that can acquire gold very quickly (and enjoys the tasks that do so). They also profit the most from TP. On the other hand, there is a group of players that wants to focus their efforts on the player v player aspect of the game and may be more casual at times. It looks at the prices on TP as being too high for the level of effort.

A key “fix” is to make the relative rewards (cash, items, components, etc) equal across the different playstyles then allow trading to transfer one playstyles primary to get cash (ideally in pvp and wvw) to another playstyle’s ability to “process common materials” (crafting) to another playstyle’s ability to acquire rare goods of high value (e.g. dungeons). Note: each playstyle should have some resource or service it does better than all other playstyles.

WvW: Gold
PvE: Rare Items and materials
Crafting: Conversion of Materials to Unique Items (often consumables)
PvP: ?

Right now you have 2 problems:

1. Not all playstyles have a dominant resource they can collect.
2. You can’t easily transfer your dominant resource to get the goods from another playstyle.

This is because:

1. Things like EOTM create more resources than WvW though it is in the same “category”
2. SPvP was designed to be a separate system versus having a dominant resource to contribute to the economy.
3. There are FAR too many restrictions on the transfer of effort from one playstyle to get the resources of items generated from another.

In simple terms, if I WvW and can only acquire random and rare ascended drops, I would find “fair effort” leading to my being able to spend time collecting gold to buy ascended armor and weapons off TP from a crafter. If I craft, I would like to think that the rewards for my effort could extend outside my account. The crafter, not making much gold on his own would have a set of WvW customers who simply outproduce gold (that being their dominant resource). The PvEr who “finds” lots of great rare drops might think they can get cash for those items that didn’t drop from the WvW player. BUT. . . that only happens if you essentially allow full trade with very few restrictions.

Solution:

More cash/gold rewards for fighting. (Make gold the dominant resource of WvW)
More upgrades for PvP (Tomes of Knowledge, scrolls, etc etc.) This one is a puzzle for me frankly.
Reduce gold for PvE but increase rare drops (tradeable items for gold)
Free up the ability to trade ALMOST anything that is “unused”
Make Gold the common standard of transfer of resources/items on TP.

Allow the acquisition of items to occur thru different currencies (e.g. dungeon tokens) but then allow the transfer of these items to occur in the common currency of gold via TP or frankly mailing, guild banks etc.

Only keep the newest and freshest items tied to a gameplay mode to promote trying something that is really cool when it is also “hot”. For example, you can start with ascended being craftable only so long as that lasts say for a Season only. You can have the new food account bound to get people into Dry Top, but with the next chapter, you could remove the restriction.

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

No.

As much as I hate the current TP flipper economy, I hate hardcorz raiding even more. No masochist dungeons.

Really leave dungeons out of the discussion entirely, dungeons are the least interesting part of this game. Focus on Living World and other open world content.

I’ve thought of a good solution to all of this, that would fix a lot of the problems that people claim TP tycoons solve. Add an ANet Tradebot.

Have ANet build their own bot that constantly trawls the TP, looking for the same good deals that flippers look for. Any items where the order price is more than 15% lower than the sell price, it buys some of them at the order price and offers them at 5% below the sell price, pocketing the profits. It would also stockpile items that were selling too low when supplies are unusually high, and trickle them back in when supplies lower. These functions shouldn’t be too hard for ANet to pull off, especially given how they know in advance what items will be increasing or decreasing in supply.

Using this mechanism, they could maintain a sub-15% differential on ALL buy/sell prices, maintain a relatively stable pricing on commodities, prevent skyrocketing luxury good prices by preventing people from making excessive amounts on the TP, and ALL the profits involved would be pure gold sink, rather than going into the pockets of TP flippers. It would offer all the supposed benefits of the current economy with none of the downsides.

Ohoni.6057:

No.

As much as I hate the current TP flipper economy, I hate hardcorz raiding even more. No masochist dungeons.

Really leave dungeons out of the discussion entirely, dungeons are the least interesting part of this game. Focus on Living World and other open world content.

No one said anything about raids, let alone “hardcorz” raids. Difficult dungeons does not necessarily equate to raids, and the specifics of how they are implemented are irrelevant to this discussion anyway. What matters is that the content be difficult enough that average Joe cannot pubsmash his way through it without skill and that the rewards be consistent towards a goal and tradeable. That’s how you make PvE rewarding compared to economy swashbuckling.

eithinan.9841:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

That is what dungeon tokens are for. The various gift of (whatever) for 500 tokens are used to craft some of the coolest skins in the game including legendary weapon. I personally hate the grind game in every other mmo where to get gear you have to re run the same content over and over again, Gw2 has so far avoided that particular curse so far.

phys.7689:

Now the real issue i see, is one of incentives, and control of production.

One major factor is that TP earnings scale with skill/knowledge/investment noticeably better than other activities.

To make this less the case, you have to come up with systems that reward differently based on how skilled/invested you are in something.

You are still conflating “reward” and “profit from investment”. They are still 2 different things.

Vol.7601:

this is still going on? I thought multiple points from the resident economist would have calmed things down

I think its still going strong because this one is fun.

your definition of reward and profit from investments may be different, that is not my meaning

reward is
“something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc. "
this would put profit from investment as a reward for investing
enemy loot as reward for killing things

it all fits into the category of reward, you do something of value, and you get rewarded for it. The only argument i can see being made for profit not being a reward is that you didnt provide service merit or hardship, but i would say that investment is actually a service.

I understand people want to define things outside the scope of the normal usage and english language, but if you do so, the burden of explaining that new usuage is on you, not the person using the language properly.

but really the only reason to discuss these semantics, is if you genuinely believe some misunderstanding is occuring because of it.

so to be clear, when you see reward mentioned in my posts, it will be defined as this

reward: something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.

Ohoni.6057:

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

No.

As much as I hate the current TP flipper economy, I hate hardcorz raiding even more. No masochist dungeons.

Really leave dungeons out of the discussion entirely, dungeons are the least interesting part of this game. Focus on Living World and other open world content.

I’ve thought of a good solution to all of this, that would fix a lot of the problems that people claim TP tycoons solve. Add an ANet Tradebot.

Have ANet build their own bot that constantly trawls the TP, looking for the same good deals that flippers look for. Any items where the order price is more than 15% lower than the sell price, it buys some of them at the order price and offers them at 5% below the sell price, pocketing the profits. It would also stockpile items that were selling too low when supplies are unusually high, and trickle them back in when supplies lower. These functions shouldn’t be too hard for ANet to pull off, especially given how they know in advance what items will be increasing or decreasing in supply.

Using this mechanism, they could maintain a sub-15% differential on ALL buy/sell prices, maintain a relatively stable pricing on commodities, prevent skyrocketing luxury good prices by preventing people from making excessive amounts on the TP, and ALL the profits involved would be pure gold sink, rather than going into the pockets of TP flippers. It would offer all the supposed benefits of the current economy with none of the downsides.

in your opinion this is the case
thats why i suggest that every major mode have some unique rewards that you can specifically target, to the exclusion of other rewards, that you can also trade

this would allow you to get dungeon hardcore dungeon shinies, at a price set by the players that do dungeons, and they could get your dedicated open world shinies at a price set by you open world cats.

right now, instead of trading value /services/skills, people can only trade gold earning potential.

Ohoni.6057:

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

No.

As much as I hate the current TP flipper economy, I hate hardcorz raiding even more. No masochist dungeons.

Really leave dungeons out of the discussion entirely, dungeons are the least interesting part of this game. Focus on Living World and other open world content.

I’ve thought of a good solution to all of this, that would fix a lot of the problems that people claim TP tycoons solve. Add an ANet Tradebot.

Have ANet build their own bot that constantly trawls the TP, looking for the same good deals that flippers look for. Any items where the order price is more than 15% lower than the sell price, it buys some of them at the order price and offers them at 5% below the sell price, pocketing the profits. It would also stockpile items that were selling too low when supplies are unusually high, and trickle them back in when supplies lower. These functions shouldn’t be too hard for ANet to pull off, especially given how they know in advance what items will be increasing or decreasing in supply.

Using this mechanism, they could maintain a sub-15% differential on ALL buy/sell prices, maintain a relatively stable pricing on commodities, prevent skyrocketing luxury good prices by preventing people from making excessive amounts on the TP, and ALL the profits involved would be pure gold sink, rather than going into the pockets of TP flippers. It would offer all the supposed benefits of the current economy with none of the downsides.

Ah, the solution to the problem that players are too stupid to use the TP properly is solved by an autonomous agent whose sole job is to out flip the flippers by being the ultimate flipper and collapse the gaps. Of course to start you need to give it enough seed money to start and that’s “new” money flowing into the economy. Sure, it’s profits will offset it some buy with the profits decreasing on every pass as it closes the gap to 15%, that’s less and less profit, even a loss as you suggest, then it’ll be nothing more than a giant gold source. On one hand JS is carefully adjusting the gold spigots to control the growth of gold and you are suggesting unleashing Niagra Falls overnight.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

my guess is that these issues, even though they may not be as drastic as the OP was, keep coming up, and are a source of contention for a lot of players. Theres nor real point in burying the thread if another one will pop up next week.

As to your point about dungeon runners create items/rewards and have no risk that is a matter of game design which means, it can be changed, also the risk on the TP in order to profit is highly overated. It is greater than zero, but there are methods which will result in a strong net gain in money consistently. Also when you start talking about “risk” you need to start including time.
the big risk in dungeons, is time. A bad dungeon run? could take 20min to an hour
if the most basic activity pays 4 gold an hour, that means they are risking 4 gold to 1.3 gold with failed runs.
whereas time risked while TP trading?
lets say i go with high and low on soft wood, lowest price over last 24 hours was 1.05 silver, highest sell price is 1.41 silver, lets say i bought at 1.07 silver and sold at 1.39 i make 11 copper per sale, you make 27 silver per stack, to do do buy orders for 10 stacks and sell orders for 10 stacks takes about 2 minutes.

my risk in time is fairly small, for 2.7 gold return.

You can’t compare the risk of “losing time” for a failed Dungeon run to the risk of actually losing money on bad investments. As an example, say a player purchased a Monocle when prices were 500 Gold, but a re-release dropped the value to 40 Gold. Yes this would be more of a speculation problem at its core, but since we’re talking TP and risk, this example still applies. As for more short term risk, say I purchased 10,000 pieces of Mithril Ore at 50c each, but prices dropped to 38c. I just lost 10,000 × 12c of net worth. For a Dungeon runner who fails a run, you just lost your time. As I stated on the other page of this thread, the Dungeon doesn’t take away Gold whenever you fail a run.

Now as for the issue of TP, and the negative feelings the OP and others have for it, John brought up good points in his post. These players simply don’t understand how American type free market systems work. But it’s hard to really educate them via in game tools or tip-bars. This is something you need to learn in school. Not everyone is familiar with business or economic talk, just as I’m not familiar with how to change a tire on my wife’s car (but at least I know how to pump my own gas!)

As an aside, I would really like to know if the OP is just anti-Capitalist because he doesn’t like rich people, jealous that he’s unable to be rich, or just wants in-game mechanics to benefit his play style over others. All his posts in this 10+ page thread could indicate all three.

mathmatically there isnt really a difference between a loss of earning rate and direct loss, once you consider the factor time is money.

when you get into the hardcore earning mindset, time really is money.
every time i had a bad dungeon run, it was costing me money.

I could earn 5 gold an hour without having to pay attention, and just doing 4/7 frostgorge bosses

this means every minute has a base earning time of 8.33 silver a minute, in an easy carefree watch netflix level of effort.

so the dungeon that may pay me 1 gold an hour and cuts my earnings in the same time period down to 1.6 silver per minute is in fact a huge risk.
as far as risk from speculation
Im sorry but you are straight up gambling thats different, flipping and most TP merchanting practices are pretty far from gambling. The only real risk is how long it will take, and the more money you have, the less that matters except for turning over your profit again.

an analogy for speculation in would be like betting 2k gold on a spvp match or in a pve dungeon speed run competition.

phys.7689:

in your opinion this is the case
thats why i suggest that every major mode have some unique rewards that you can specifically target, to the exclusion of other rewards, that you can also trade

this would allow you to get dungeon hardcore dungeon shinies, at a price set by the players that do dungeons, and they could get your dedicated open world shinies at a price set by you open world cats.

right now, instead of trading value /services/skills, people can only trade gold earning potential.

Wait, having specific “mode only” rewards as a way to increase the “value” of doing PvE/WvW/PvP to be more in line with TP flipping? (just trying to get what you are saying). but would such tangible rewards (anything other than AP. i.e. skins, loot, gold, etc.) be considered a grind? There are already a number of players who think this game is too grindy as it is. Adding in only a WvW reward, for example, that can only be obtained through that paticular game mode would mean that it exludes those who don’t or rarely play WvW. Sure they can buy it off the TP, but it would be another precureser level item, as it would be highly sought after by those who don’t want to “grind” WvW, or even want to play WvW? Even so this doesn’t really solve anything, as it just becomes another item to flip on the TP.

And that’s one of the age old arguments in developing rewards.

One side want rewards tied to doing specific content thus sporting such an item is a testament of your participation in that event.

On the other are players who want all items available via secondary or tertiary paths of acquisition which does include simply buying them from other players.

The second group doesn’t want to be forced into gaming paths they either don’t enjoy or are especially difficult for them to do (JP and PvP in my case) and they will always butt heads with the exclusive reward content players. Making one group happy makes the other group unhappy so the best choice for MMO devs is to make both groups only a little unhappy.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

in your opinion this is the case
thats why i suggest that every major mode have some unique rewards that you can specifically target, to the exclusion of other rewards, that you can also trade

this would allow you to get dungeon hardcore dungeon shinies, at a price set by the players that do dungeons, and they could get your dedicated open world shinies at a price set by you open world cats.

right now, instead of trading value /services/skills, people can only trade gold earning potential.

Wait, having specific “mode only” rewards as a way to increase the “value” of doing PvE/WvW/PvP to be more in line with TP flipping? (just trying to get what you are saying). but would such tangible rewards (anything other than AP. i.e. skins, loot, gold, etc.) be considered a grind? There are already a number of players who think this game is too grindy as it is. Adding in only a WvW reward, for example, that can only be obtained through that paticular game mode would mean that it exludes those who don’t or rarely play WvW. Sure they can buy it off the TP, but it would be another precureser level item, as it would be highly sought after by those who don’t want to “grind” WvW, or even want to play WvW? Even so this doesn’t really solve anything, as it just becomes another item to flip on the TP.

Ok, taking your example.
Lets say there was a precursor level of item, it takes either a lot of WvW, or extremely skilled WvW, or a combination of that. It also requires you give up other rewards (gold/loot/event rewards) while pursuing it.

heres the big difference, its supply is controlled by the players. Players will only actively turn off their standard rewards if this has value. The other difference is its something a player who doesnt want to focus on gold has first dibs on. They get it first, then choose the price they find acceptable for the time/work they do. Not only that, but this is their product, that they will continue to produce, they are no longer the guy who puts items on ebay that he randomly found trying to clean his basement, they are proffesionals selling their service.
They are lot less likely to sell to frivolous buy orders in this case.
take a look at dusk right now
http://www.gw2spidy.com/search/dusk?recipes=
flipper has no place in this item right now, the buy order/sell order price is less than 15% because the majority of people selling precursors consistently, are in the business of selling precursors, and the demand backs it up.

As far as grind, it will eliminate some grind by being partly based on skill/achievement in a chosen field. But there will of course still be some effort required, or it would have low value.
the grind should also be less than others because it is specific, eliminates chances for other rewards, and can only be gotten in a specific way.
since say only 20% of the population WvWs, and only 25% of them opt in to this system, and only 50% of those who opt in actually want to sell the items, the supply will be low, even if it isnt insanely super grindy. If its starts to become not valuable, people will opt out, and reduce supply, allowing it to return to value.

basically the people selling these items will be doing it for business, they will not be uneducated consumers who have to sell to consume. The items will be rare due to being specific, and designed to take a decent amount of effort, or a great amount of skill. Since the production will in this case be deliberate and controlled, the value will be high, And flippers will probably not be able to make comparitively as much on these products.
Conversely the specific play of various player types will have value, and they wont feel like they must grind gold specifically to succeed.

This allows TP players to still be the highest gold earners, while still giving content players a way to earn big cash by getting better or delving deeper into their chosen baliwick.

Heck they could even have a lore driven track where you hunt/discover knowlege and pass tests and compete with dissertations on the world of tyria to get credit. It doesnt have to be only about dungeon running twitch skills. And for this tyrian scholarly pursuit? you can sell items that others may want without having to actually read a text box.

phys.7689:

mathmatically there isnt really a difference between a loss of earning rate and direct loss, once you consider the factor time is money.

when you get into the hardcore earning mindset, time really is money.
every time i had a bad dungeon run, it was costing me money.

I could earn 5 gold an hour without having to pay attention, and just doing 4/7 frostgorge bosses

this means every minute has a base earning time of 8.33 silver a minute, in an easy carefree watch netflix level of effort.

so the dungeon that may pay me 1 gold an hour and cuts my earnings in the same time period down to 1.6 silver per minute is in fact a huge risk.
as far as risk from speculation
Im sorry but you are straight up gambling thats different, flipping and most TP merchanting practices are pretty far from gambling. The only real risk is how long it will take, and the more money you have, the less that matters except for turning over your profit again.

an analogy for speculation in would be like betting 2k gold on a spvp match or in a pve dungeon speed run competition.

If you have that mindset where you put a monetary value on your time, that means EVERYTHING in this game outside of farming makes you lose money. If you do the new Living Story 2 path, or if you do a Dynamic Event, you’re losing out on the opportunity to do a Dungeon speed clear. That’s the fallacy of this argument. Time does not equal money.

Now back to the loss of earning and direct loss discussion. When you do a Dungeon and fail, you do not lose money. If had 500 Gold in your bank, you still have 500 Gold after a failed Dungeon run. On the other hand, if you have 500 Gold in your bank, spent 400 of it on an investment, and that investment loses value, you have a negative impact on your net worth. Big big difference between the two.

One more thing you brought up a few posts up. Rewards from events are NOT the same as profits from the TP. You CANNOT compare the two, as one is newly created wealth that didn’t exist before, and the other is existing wealth that’s transferred between players. The economic impact of each is vastly different, and thus can never be compared. It would be like Anet offering to introduce Mounts to the game, but instead release a new Gem Store weapon skin. You cannot compare Mounts to a Weapon skin.

But supply of every item on the TP is already controlled by the players. Every T1-6 mat, every precurser, legendary, exotic weapon, skin, recipe, food, etc.

While they may not be suseptable to flipping, like dusk, they will still be highly priced items, that your avarage PvE player wouldn’t be able to afford for a long time. And so you would still have the perceived problem that those who complete said tasks are “richer” than a dungeon runner, or open PvEer because they are able to sell the item at a high price. (Of course that price will reflect their time and effort put into such a task, plus a percentage for profit).

I’m not opposed to having such a thing in general. I’m actually for such a thing. It’s similar to the precurser scavanger idea thats been tossed about. But I don’t really see it as a solution to anything. It might make those who go after such things “feel” better about the rewards, but still the initial issue or TP players having too much money still remains.

Lore driven track? HECK YES!! I would love that, even if for a stupid skin and maybe a bit of gold at the end. But having extended missions like that would be rad. OOOOO make them Order Specific!!!!

Vol.7601:

this is still going on? I thought multiple points from the resident economist would have calmed things down

These points simply tend towards armchair, MMO hobby economist wanna-bes spouting off their ‘facts’ about why JS is wrong to feel good about how smart they think they are.

Frankly, I read JS post and the bottom line was “Nothing is going to change people. This is our best at the moment”. There was certainly nothing there that should give anyone the idea that flipping, etc… is going to be restricted in anyway. If anything, there was hints of a direction ingame making it EASIER for people to use the TP with better/more accessible information. Some people haven’t figured that out yet.

Ayrilana.1396:

I love how people can discount economic theory and principles because of differences in the game’s economy vs real life’s economy.

The irony is that the classical models taught in a first year undergraduate course on economics apply even better to game economies than national or world economies.

Obtena.7952:

Vol.7601:

this is still going on? I thought multiple points from the resident economist would have calmed things down

These points simply tend towards armchair, MMO hobby economist wanna-bes spouting off their ‘facts’ about why JS is wrong to feel good about how smart they think they are.

Frankly, I read JS post and the bottom line was “Nothing is going to change people. This is our best at the moment”. There was certainly nothing there that should give anyone the idea that flipping, etc… is going to be restricted in anyway. If anything, there was hints of a direction ingame making it EASIER for people to use the TP with better/more accessible information. Some people haven’t figured that out yet.

Actually Obtena, it isn’t about how smart they are. On the contrary, they just don’t understand economics period. John gives facts backed by research, and they don’t understand. And at this point, there isn’t anything any of us can do to help explain things, since the issue is more complicated than “I wants more Gold, increase rewards for fairness!”

pdavis.8031:

But supply of every item on the TP is already controlled by the players. Every T1-6 mat, every precurser, legendary, exotic weapon, skin, recipe, food, etc.

While they may not be suseptable to flipping, like dusk, they will still be highly priced items, that your avarage PvE player wouldn’t be able to afford for a long time. And so you would still have the perceived problem that those who complete said tasks are “richer” than a dungeon runner, or open PvEer because they are able to sell the item at a high price. (Of course that price will reflect their time and effort put into such a task, plus a percentage for profit).

I’m not opposed to having such a thing in general. I’m actually for such a thing. It’s similar to the precurser scavanger idea thats been tossed about. But I don’t really see it as a solution to anything. It might make those who go after such things “feel” better about the rewards, but still the initial issue or TP players having too much money still remains.

Lore driven track? HECK YES!! I would love that, even if for a stupid skin and maybe a bit of gold at the end. But having extended missions like that would be rad. OOOOO make them Order Specific!!!!

no the supply of t6 is not controlled by the players, other than in the same way that humans control the amount of oxygen they breathe.

t6 item supply is a function of how many hours every player plays in a level 76ish zone + the amount from people who transform t5 items.

you cannot choose to stop producing t6 mats while playing a certain level of content. The majority of t6 mats are created by accident. There are a few enemies with specific drops, but the majority of the supply doesnt come from them.

We cant control how much silk comes in or how much leather. we create by essentially just living as a level 70+ charachter in the world, its almost like our feces. A substantial amount of the exotic weapons are a byproduct of precursor gambling (the feces of precursor gambles) most of the runes? byproduct of trying to get strength rune/divinity runes back in the day from the forge

In real life, most products are sought after, you dont make refined oil by mistake, you dont get steel by mistake, you dont build buildings by mistake. If no one wants steel? steel production slows down.

players will have means of getting rich through specific content, so while the tp players may be well payed, they wont be the only path to riches. A big reason there is so much ineffeciency for flippers to take advantage of, is because most of the supply comes from random players with other goals, and a bunch of crap to get rid of.

phys.7689:

but really the only reason to discuss these semantics, is if you genuinely believe some misunderstanding is occuring because of it.

so to be clear, when you see reward mentioned in my posts, it will be defined as this

reward: something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.

It has been explained multiple times and your definition doesn’t fit both. You are choosing to conflate the 2 terms intentionally to support your baseless assumptions in this thread.

Reward = result of playing the game and getting “new” materials/gold into the economy.

Profit from investment = Investing in and using materials/gold that has already been created and in circulation.

2 VERY different things.

Behellagh.1468:

And that’s one of the age old arguments in developing rewards.

One side want rewards tied to doing specific content thus sporting such an item is a testament of your participation in that event.

On the other are players who want all items available via secondary or tertiary paths of acquisition which does include simply buying them from other players.

The second group doesn’t want to be forced into gaming paths they either don’t enjoy or are especially difficult for them to do (JP and PvP in my case) and they will always butt heads with the exclusive reward content players. Making one group happy makes the other group unhappy so the best choice for MMO devs is to make both groups only a little unhappy.

being able to sell these items is a key part of the plan to making tp and gold earning more balanced.

If you can sell items you can only get through mastery and intent (whether that be hard content, a lot of content/knowledge) you will have a valuable item to sell, to the people who dont want to do that content. You will also be personally invested in the value of that item, instead of it being something you need to get rid of. If the item isnt worth your time, you wont produce it. this means it is less likely to be flipped at a large rate.
at the same time it will give goals for different levels of play and mastery at those types of play. Since most of the rewards will be tailored to the playstyle, some will not even try to sell it, they will use it for themselves mostly. They will only sell when the price is right.

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

but really the only reason to discuss these semantics, is if you genuinely believe some misunderstanding is occuring because of it.

so to be clear, when you see reward mentioned in my posts, it will be defined as this

reward: something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.

It has been explained multiple times and your definition doesn’t fit both. You are choosing to conflate the 2 terms intentionally to support your baseless assumptions in this thread.

Reward = result of playing the game and getting “new” materials/gold into the economy.

Profit from investment = Investing in and using materials/gold that has already been created and in circulation.

2 VERY different things.

this is you guys new definition which has nothing to do with english.
I would have to create a new word that most people wouldnt understand to describe what the word reward usually means.

would you prefer i said value gained?

Flipping serves a pretty important purpose in driving the price of an item to what it is actually perceived to be worth. It even has a food chain of it’s own. One need only observe how the Recipe: Chaos of Lyssa has been traded over the last month or so. Flippers flipping other flippers flips. At some point the item reaches a value that flippers stop buying and then it falls down as they try to sell their stock. Some flippers win, some lose depending on how big of a risk they were taking.

phys.7689:

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

but really the only reason to discuss these semantics, is if you genuinely believe some misunderstanding is occuring because of it.

so to be clear, when you see reward mentioned in my posts, it will be defined as this

reward: something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.

It has been explained multiple times and your definition doesn’t fit both. You are choosing to conflate the 2 terms intentionally to support your baseless assumptions in this thread.

Reward = result of playing the game and getting “new” materials/gold into the economy.

Profit from investment = Investing in and using materials/gold that has already been created and in circulation.

2 VERY different things.

this is you guys new definition which has nothing to do with english.
I would have to create a new word that most people wouldnt understand to describe what the word reward usually means.

would you prefer i said value gained?

Please see below:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

One more thing you brought up a few posts up. Rewards from events are NOT the same as profits from the TP. You CANNOT compare the two, as one is newly created wealth that didn’t exist before, and the other is existing wealth that’s transferred between players. The economic impact of each is vastly different, and thus can never be compared. It would be like Anet offering to introduce Mounts to the game, but instead release a new Gem Store weapon skin. You cannot compare Mounts to a Weapon skin.

You can call it whatever you want, but it still cannot be compared.

Fenrir.3609:

phys.7689:

Fenrir.3609:

Profit from dungeons scales with skill/knowledge. You can make very large amounts of gold per day from speedrun tours and path selling.

Which flies in the face of some of the arguments raised thus far. The gold you can gain from top end pve is more than enough to efficiently aquire luxury items. Moreover I would be interested to see people explain exactly how they are flipping out multiples of the amount you can make speedrunning/selling, on a regular, consistent, daily basis.

wanze just said he makes about 200 gold a day from buy orders. When i was trying to finish my legendary, i think i made about 60 gold a day from TP/merchanting/transforming items, and about 30-40 gold a day from pve, i spent way more time in pve than flipping.

The cap on dungeon direct earning is 36.5 and since dungeons primarily are good at awarding gold, they will scale poorly with inflation. The only way to not scale poorly is to offer some unique product. thats 25 paths, if each path takes an average of 10 minutes to beat(and move to the next one), thats 250 minutes, or 4 hours and 10 minutes or 8.37 gold per hour. you do make some more money in drops, lets say you make 10 gold an hour.
pretty skilled work, long hours
but from what i remember, selling everything(lowest seller), my calculations on frostgorge champ train was somewhere around 9 gold an hour. you arent really getting paid that well for that level of skill, except possibly in selling paths, and thats mostly because you are bringing something to market, even then i would love a breakdown of how long it takes you on average to solo the dungeon up to the boss (without exploits of course) and how long it takes to fill the party.

I was not a TP player of high skill, and i was beating highly skilled dungeon runners in earnings in less time, while i was at the same time making money from gold grind farms

Skilled dungeon play has a ceiling in rewards, and they cannot really raise it, because it currently would throw off other rewards, aside from path selling.

The current means of skilled dungeon play only track speed, they dont track deaths, they dont track what objectives you completed, and they dont track enemies killed, or quality of the enemies killed, it also doesnt track well to dungeon path difficulty. As a means of tracking your skill/success it is kind of shallow.

Aside from the gold awarded, the other items have little value attached (in general)

and just think, dungeons is probably the best awarded game activity aside from TP playing, that most scales in skill, just imagine the value of everything else besides it.

1. You didn’t refute the point that dungeons scale with skill really, I guess that is because they clearly do. They do also scale with inflation more than you seem to suggest given a large chunk of the potential rewards comes from non direct gold sources which are, wait for it, market driven.

Yes you can make a very large amount from open world faceroll farming as well, but that doesn’t alter that fact that player A who is doing dungeon speedrun tours and selling paths is going to be making a boat load more than player B in his lolPVT gear and pug groups.

That said, I would love to see dungeons improved and (for a change) not neglected.

2. I claimed that you can make more than enough from pve to afford luxury items. Your 30-40G a day backs that claim up if anything.

3. Again if someone is claiming to make 200G+ each and every day from flipping, or 60G a day from casual TP activities whilst pveing, well we are going to have to see some evidence to back up that claim.

Now I am 100% for rewarding skilled play, I would love new “hardcore” modes/content and ways of distinguishing the top players. That would be amazing. But let’s be honest here, yes you can make a large amount of gold via pve and yes, anyone who claims that “but but you can make like 1321230G per day from the TP and it is out of whack” needs to show evidence because it smacks of horse $%^*.

+1

It’s clear that — so far, at least — ANet is rewarding participation in PvE over skill. Skill’s main benefit is faster dungeon runs and a few specialty drops that don’t seem all that valuable. That is an issue for another thread in another forum. When it comes to proving that the TP issues need to be addressed, I’m also going to want to see more than opinions that there is a problem.

And people STILL dont comprehend that it’s not a problem with the trade post. It’s a problem with players choosing not to take their gods be kitten ed time when selling crap.

Seriously though, this thread needs to be closed. It’s 10 pages of the same complaint regurgitated over and over again. Not to mention John cant teach econ to people who dont care to listen.

Aidan Savage.2078:

And people STILL dont comprehend that it’s not a problem with the trade post. It’s a problem with players choosing not to take their gods be kitten ed time when selling crap.

Seriously though, this thread needs to be closed. It’s 10 pages of the same complaint regurgitated over and over again. Not to mention John cant teach econ to people who dont care to listen.

John’s not going to close it, because some of us are actually providing valuable insight into why the OP is wrong. So while the OP’s reasons for this thread are completely flawed, the discussion against him is actually educating.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Aidan Savage.2078:

And people STILL dont comprehend that it’s not a problem with the trade post. It’s a problem with players choosing not to take their gods be kitten ed time when selling crap.

Seriously though, this thread needs to be closed. It’s 10 pages of the same complaint regurgitated over and over again. Not to mention John cant teach econ to people who dont care to listen.

John’s not going to close it, because some of us are actually providing valuable insight into why the OP is wrong. So while the OP’s reasons for this thread are completely flawed, the discussion against him is actually educating.

So your rant calling me jealous like kitten and a communist is educating? Yeah, keep talking, I’m really curious. And by the way, I’m from Germany, you can call me radical right-wing too if you want.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

So you saying that just bumping up dungeon rewards wouldn’t solve the problem because everything would stay the same, just on a higher level.
But we do have already that kind of revenue in the game. The traiding post flipping can offer the amount of gold you say would be unhealthy to the economy. It does affect less people because less people take the time to get good at flipping the traiding post, but the problem is already there. As I’ve said, I don’t want to stop traiding post flipping in general, even if I disagree with the stated “benefits” flippers offer to the economy, but I want to bring the revenue you can obtain through traiding post flipping on the same level as, lets say the rewards you get through dungeon running, just higher to make up for that great “risk” you take playing the traiding post.
I think Wanze’s idea is a good way to cap the revenue flippers can make, since they have to gather the karma first on order to get gold.

As someone has already told you, the money that some players get from flipping is not bad for the economy because it’s money that has changed hands, it wasn’t created out of thin air. On the contrary, the gold that you get from dungeons is created out of thin air every time you complete a dungeon, just like when your government prints money to inject liquidity in the economy. This printed money estimulates inflation which, out of hand, could potentially destabilize the economy. On top of that, your brilliant idea was to increase the rewards from dungeon.

I’ll have to agree with most people here and assume that you just don’t know the basics so it’s just futile to try to argue with you.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Aidan Savage.2078:

And people STILL dont comprehend that it’s not a problem with the trade post. It’s a problem with players choosing not to take their gods be kitten ed time when selling crap.

Seriously though, this thread needs to be closed. It’s 10 pages of the same complaint regurgitated over and over again. Not to mention John cant teach econ to people who dont care to listen.

John’s not going to close it, because some of us are actually providing valuable insight into why the OP is wrong. So while the OP’s reasons for this thread are completely flawed, the discussion against him is actually educating.

So your rant calling me jealous like kitten and a communist is educating? Yeah, keep talking, I’m really curious. And by the way, I’m from Germany, you can call me radical right-wing too if you want.

Sorry, I thought you were from China. I don’t understand how GMT works, so when calculating your time zone, I placed you in Beijing.

Anyways, I’m not ranting on you at at. I was trying to understand the reason why you’re so against rich people. If you’d like, I can quote each and every post you made that you said you don’t like others having more money than you, and that you’re ok with others making more money than flippers (which negates your whole complaint in that regard). Your reasons for this thread changed every few posts.

anabasis.7346:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

So you saying that just bumping up dungeon rewards wouldn’t solve the problem because everything would stay the same, just on a higher level.
But we do have already that kind of revenue in the game. The traiding post flipping can offer the amount of gold you say would be unhealthy to the economy. It does affect less people because less people take the time to get good at flipping the traiding post, but the problem is already there. As I’ve said, I don’t want to stop traiding post flipping in general, even if I disagree with the stated “benefits” flippers offer to the economy, but I want to bring the revenue you can obtain through traiding post flipping on the same level as, lets say the rewards you get through dungeon running, just higher to make up for that great “risk” you take playing the traiding post.
I think Wanze’s idea is a good way to cap the revenue flippers can make, since they have to gather the karma first on order to get gold.

As someone has already told you, the money that some players get from flipping is not bad for the economy because it’s money that has changed hands, it wasn’t created out of thin air. On the contrary, the gold that you get from dungeons is created out of thin air every time you complete a dungeon, just like when your government prints money to inject liquidity in the economy. This printed money estimulates inflation which, out of hand, could potentially destabilize the economy. On top of that, your brilliant idea was to increase the rewards from dungeon.

I’ll have to agree with most people here and assume that you just don’t know the basics so it’s just futile to try to argue with you.

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

But supply of every item on the TP is already controlled by the players. Every T1-6 mat, every precurser, legendary, exotic weapon, skin, recipe, food, etc.

While they may not be suseptable to flipping, like dusk, they will still be highly priced items, that your avarage PvE player wouldn’t be able to afford for a long time. And so you would still have the perceived problem that those who complete said tasks are “richer” than a dungeon runner, or open PvEer because they are able to sell the item at a high price. (Of course that price will reflect their time and effort put into such a task, plus a percentage for profit).

I’m not opposed to having such a thing in general. I’m actually for such a thing. It’s similar to the precurser scavanger idea thats been tossed about. But I don’t really see it as a solution to anything. It might make those who go after such things “feel” better about the rewards, but still the initial issue or TP players having too much money still remains.

Lore driven track? HECK YES!! I would love that, even if for a stupid skin and maybe a bit of gold at the end. But having extended missions like that would be rad. OOOOO make them Order Specific!!!!

no the supply of t6 is not controlled by the players, other than in the same way that humans control the amount of oxygen they breathe.

t6 item supply is a function of how many hours every player plays in a level 76ish zone + the amount from people who transform t5 items.

you cannot choose to stop producing t6 mats while playing a certain level of content. The majority of t6 mats are created by accident. There are a few enemies with specific drops, but the majority of the supply doesnt come from them.

We cant control how much silk comes in or how much leather. we create by essentially just living as a level 70+ charachter in the world, its almost like our feces. A substantial amount of the exotic weapons are a byproduct of precursor gambling (the feces of precursor gambles) most of the runes? byproduct of trying to get strength rune/divinity runes back in the day from the forge

In real life, most products are sought after, you dont make refined oil by mistake, you dont get steel by mistake, you dont build buildings by mistake. If no one wants steel? steel production slows down.

players will have means of getting rich through specific content, so while the tp players may be well payed, they wont be the only path to riches. A big reason there is so much ineffeciency for flippers to take advantage of, is because most of the supply comes from random players with other goals, and a bunch of crap to get rid of.

Umm but EVERY T6 mat that is for sale on the TP has been placed there by the players. In fact every single item on the TP is placed there by the players. Regardless HOW these items are obtained (i.e T5 promotion, drops, crafting, etc) the supply is on the TP because the players chose to sell. If, lets say half of farmers, and half the people selling these items were to stop, what would happen to the supply? As people still continue to buy it the prices will dramatically increase, and will eventually die out.

So while I agree that we cannot control how much of an item is created, or the rate at which an item is created, we CAN control the supply of said item on the TP. Same with exotics. While a majority of them may be provided by the mystic forge, what would happen in all the players decided not to sell the non precurser weapons obtained by the forge and salvage them instead? If there were no supply of anything to the TP (i.e. selling in the TP) then TP flippers wouldn’t have anything to flip and be out of a job and be homeless bums clogging up the streets of Divinities Reach with signs begging for a copper.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

You only think the argument is stupid because you don’t understand the economic impacts of each. John’s last respond gives a really good example that you should read.

To simplify it for you, If Germany were to print billions of Deutsche Marks (not using Euros to avoid potential confusion), and released it into your economy, the value of each Deutsche Mark would fall. Same thing applies to newly created Gold in game. So by increasing the amount of currency in circulation (in game or in real life), you effectively increase the cost of goods across the board.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

You only think the argument is stupid because you don’t understand the economic impacts of each. John’s last respond gives a really good example that you should read.

To simplify it for you, If Germany were to print billions of Deutsche Marks (not using Euros to avoid potential confusion), and released it into your economy, the value of each Deutsche Mark would fall. Same thing applies to newly created Gold in game. So by increasing the amount of currency (in game or in real life), you effectively increase the cost of goods across the board.

Despite I don’t even know what this example should prove, it’s wrong on multiple layers. First off all, as said, farmers do not create new gold, yet they earn way less than traiding post flippers can earn. Secondly, if there would be more gold, people would buy more and the prices will rise until the people can afford as much items as they could before, all just has gotten more expensive. There is a new balance. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different. John don’t want to release more new gold to the market from just one type of gameplay because all players would have to participate in it in order to keep up. That is understandable and (IMPORTANT NOTE ->)
it is not my intention to higher the prices but to bring the revenue one could get from traiding post flipping in line with the revenue of other activities, that require as much time and/or skill as traiding post flipping does.

He could be a visual learner so graphs would probably be more effective. If I have time tonight I’ll find some and post them on here or at least a link to somewhere.

I found this link to be a good read.

http://economics.about.com/cs/money/a/print_money.htm

However. I’ll still try to find something with graphs later.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

You only think the argument is stupid because you don’t understand the economic impacts of each. John’s last respond gives a really good example that you should read.

To simplify it for you, If Germany were to print billions of Deutsche Marks (not using Euros to avoid potential confusion), and released it into your economy, the value of each Deutsche Mark would fall. Same thing applies to newly created Gold in game. So by increasing the amount of currency (in game or in real life), you effectively increase the cost of goods across the board.

Despite I don’t even know what this example should prove, it’s wrong on multiple layers. First off all, as said, farmers do not create new gold, yet they earn way less than traiding post flippers can earn. Secondly, if there would be more gold, people would buy more and the prices will rise until the people can afford as much items as they could before, all just has gotten more expensive. There is a new balance. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different. John don’t want to release more new gold to the market from just one type of gameplay because all players would have to participate in it in order to keep up. That is understandable and (IMPORTANT NOTE ->)
it is not my intention to higher the prices but to bring the revenue one could get from traiding post flipping in line with the revenue of other activities, that require as much time and/or skill as traiding post flipping does.

You can’t as all other activities would add new gold to the system.

Ayrilana.1396:

He could be a visual learner so graphs would probably be more effective. If I have time tonight I’ll find some and post them on here or at least a link to somewhere.

I found this link to be a good read.

http://economics.about.com/cs/money/a/print_money.htm

However. I’ll still try to find something with graphs later.

That’s exactly what I’ve said one post above: If players would get more gold, the supply would be drained until the prices are on the same level as the gold is, which means that nobody gets a benefit from it. However, they also have no disadvantage. If people have twice as much money and everything is twice as expensive then basically nothing has changed.
However the article you’ve linked has one flaw, even if it deosn’t apply to GW2. The auther neglects the fact that everybody who wants to buy a XBOX actually has the money to afford it. So if Walmart would keep the same prices but orders twice as much XBOXes (what’s the plural of XBOX?) and Microsoft would hire twice as much workers to produce twice as much XBOXes, they wont have a loss because they can sell twice as much XBOXes. They will make twice as much profit and twice as much people have a work, who can buy a XBOX from the money they just got.
That however would only work under perfect circumstances.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

You only think the argument is stupid because you don’t understand the economic impacts of each. John’s last respond gives a really good example that you should read.

To simplify it for you, If Germany were to print billions of Deutsche Marks (not using Euros to avoid potential confusion), and released it into your economy, the value of each Deutsche Mark would fall. Same thing applies to newly created Gold in game. So by increasing the amount of currency (in game or in real life), you effectively increase the cost of goods across the board.

Despite I don’t even know what this example should prove, it’s wrong on multiple layers. First off all, as said, farmers do not create new gold, yet they earn way less than traiding post flippers can earn. Secondly, if there would be more gold, people would buy more and the prices will rise until the people can afford as much items as they could before, all just has gotten more expensive. There is a new balance. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different. John don’t want to release more new gold to the market from just one type of gameplay because all players would have to participate in it in order to keep up. That is understandable and (IMPORTANT NOTE ->)
it is not my intention to higher the prices but to bring the revenue one could get from traiding post flipping in line with the revenue of other activities, that require as much time and/or skill as traiding post flipping does.

Again, you don’t understand the economic concepts at play here. You can’t call something wrong, when you simply don’t know what’s right. Farmers DO create new Gold. Where do you think their Gold comes from? From the Champ bags they open. This money is newly created currency.

Your “intention” to not create higher prices is negated by your lack of understanding of the subject matter. The suggestion to increase revenue is what creates higher prices to begin with. If the newly created currency doesn’t have proper sinks, the currency is devalued. Ergo, prices rise.

Edit – And you know what happens when prices rise? The common player is hurt, and the TP Trader isn’t affected, as their profits increase with nearly the same velocity as the increase in the cost of goods.

Edit 2 – To help you understand, consider this saying: “The Rich get richer”

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

You only think the argument is stupid because you don’t understand the economic impacts of each. John’s last respond gives a really good example that you should read.

To simplify it for you, If Germany were to print billions of Deutsche Marks (not using Euros to avoid potential confusion), and released it into your economy, the value of each Deutsche Mark would fall. Same thing applies to newly created Gold in game. So by increasing the amount of currency (in game or in real life), you effectively increase the cost of goods across the board.

Despite I don’t even know what this example should prove, it’s wrong on multiple layers. First off all, as said, farmers do not create new gold, yet they earn way less than traiding post flippers can earn. Secondly, if there would be more gold, people would buy more and the prices will rise until the people can afford as much items as they could before, all just has gotten more expensive. There is a new balance. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different. John don’t want to release more new gold to the market from just one type of gameplay because all players would have to participate in it in order to keep up. That is understandable and (IMPORTANT NOTE ->)
it is not my intention to higher the prices but to bring the revenue one could get from traiding post flipping in line with the revenue of other activities, that require as much time and/or skill as traiding post flipping does.

Again, you don’t understand the economic concepts at play here. You can’t call something wrong, when you simply don’t know what’s right. Farmers DO create new Gold. Where do you think their Gold comes from? From the Champ bags they open. This money is newly created currency.

Your “intention” to not create higher prices is negated by your lack of understanding of the subject matter. The suggestion to increase revenue is what creates higher prices to begin with. If the newly created currency doesn’t have proper sinks, the currency is devalued. Ergo, prices rise.

Edit – And you know what happens when prices rise? The common player is hurt, and the TP Trader isn’t affected, as their profits increase with nearly the same velocity as the increase in the cost of goods.

What the hell are you talking about? I talk about farmers, the guys who farm materials. They do sell them on the traiding post, thus they don’t create new gold. Yet they don’t get as much gold as traiding post flippers do. Someone who “farms” champbags is just stupid and not a farmer.

Agree on the visual stuff. I think the OP deserves this one:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

What the hell are you talking about? I talk about farmers, the guys who farm materials. They do sell them on the traiding post, thus they don’t create new gold. Yet they don’t get as much gold as traiding post flippers do. Someone who “farms” champbags is just stupid and not a farmer.

So wait, your whole argument is now “material farmers” don’t make as much money as TP Traders? Sorry, but your arguments change so much, it’s hard to follow some times. In regards to this, let me ask the following: Do you also believe that McDonald’s clerk should make the same amount of money as a Medical Doctor?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

What the hell are you talking about? I talk about farmers, the guys who farm materials. They do sell them on the traiding post, thus they don’t create new gold. Yet they don’t get as much gold as traiding post flippers do. Someone who “farms” champbags is just stupid and not a farmer.

So wait, your whole argument is now “material farmers” don’t make as much money as TP Traders? Sorry, but your arguments change so much, it’s hard to follow some times.

Argumentation 101:
1) If someone brings up an argument which is flawed, doesn’t belong to the topic or can be proven inconsistent, use a counter argument to prove him wrong.

To be precise:
I’ve asked you as someone who doesn’t believe traiding post flipping is healthy, why traiding post flippers are allowed to get more gold than anybody else. Your job, as someone who believes that traiding post flipping is fine is now to give me an ironclad answer.
You answer this quention with the statement that traiding post flippers don’t create new gold, thus, they don’t increase the inflation.
I’ve now given a conter argument to your argument, which states that farmers also do not create new gold, yet they don’t get as much gold as traiding post flippers are.

In regards to this, let me ask the following: Do you also believe that McDonald’s clerk should make the same amount of money as a Medical Doctor?

The answer to this question is pretty simple: You are an idiot.
But one could say that this a well-placed metaphor, in which the traiding post flipper is the doctor and the famer the worker at McDonalds.
This is wrong.
A farmer does spend as much time and effort in searching for a good spots to farm materials as you are to find new items you can flip. He also shares the same amount of risk.
Thus, the farmer can’t be compared with a worker at McDonalds but could be compared better with a doctor with a different specialization.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And there is that no-brainer argument again: The gold that traiding post flippers get is gold from other people, not newly created gold. And that’s the reason why traiding post flippers are allowed to get the most revenue in the whole kittening game.

That is stupid!

So if traiding post flippers get that much money because they’re not resposible for inflation, why are material farmers not as rich as traiding post flippers? They also don’t create new gold if they sell their stuff to the traiding post.

The argument isn’t even an answer to the question why traiding post flippers should get more gold than anybode else, yet it is repeated by everybody.

John should probably close this thread I can’t stand this idiocy anymore.

Volume – A flipper can aggregate the collections of multiple material farmers who CHOSE to sell to highest bidder rather than selling it themselves. The flipper can then turn around and sell it at prices that players are willing to pay for it. In the end a flipper farms farmers for the profits the farmers give up willingly.

Someone has explained this once to you already. There is money being left on the TP by sellers not willing to charge as much as they could get for their items. A flipper steps in and cashes in on some of that unclaimed money. If players are more than willing to pay 15 yet other players aren’t willing to charge more than 10, that’s 5 available for someone else because the sellers aren’t willing to make as much as they can. Flippers aren’t making 10 or 15 per item but just 5. But 5 times a much larger volume (>3x) of items that a farmer with poor or even good TP skills farms in a day. That’s why they make more money than a mat farmer.

There are many more players who simply sell to highest bidder for the quick buck than try to sell an item themselves and risk that it may take considerably longer to sell (time between play sessions). Same is true with buyers wanting an item now and are willing to pay the low sale price for it rather than put in a bid and wait. A flipper offers immediacy at a price that’s acceptable to all party’s and pockets the difference. Times a lot.

It’s not the fault of the TP but a large percentage of those using it that allows a middle man to step in and take the money being left behind if only those players were willing to take a bit of risk for that money.