Vendor trash, a-net, central banks and lessons from the eurozone.
I’ll add some history. Government use to have heavy regulation on the banks in the US to control economic growth and to make sure things like the Great Depression didn’t happen again. 10ish year’s ago we moved to remove those regulations so the banks could do for of what they wanted and sell and buy assets as they see fit. Now US is in economic trouble again because of the lack of regulation.
Throwing money in the pool or lowering prices is not always the best way to fix things or stir the economy. Yellows selling right now on my server for 5-15G. I feel that is too high see how much money you can really make. So over time the market price for yellow’s will come down if everyone thinks the same. Eventually it will stable out to the appropriate selling price for how much money is really in the world.
Main problem is users in GW2 are selling items at other MMO prices. Users need to bring down their prices in line with the games economy. A weapon for 30-80G is ridiculous. 5-10G is hard to come by and sounds more in line with how hard it is to get money.
I’ll add some history. Government use to have heavy regulation on the banks in the US to control economic growth and to make sure things like the Great Depression didn’t happen again. 10ish year’s ago we moved to remove those regulations so the banks could do for of what they wanted and sell and buy assets as they see fit. Now US is in economic trouble again because of the lack of regulation.
Throwing money in the pool or lowering prices is not always the best way to fix things or stir the economy. Yellows selling right now on my server for 5-15G. I feel that is too high see how much money you can really make. So over time the market price for yellow’s will come down if everyone thinks the same. Eventually it will stable out to the appropriate selling price for how much money is really in the world.
Main problem is users in GW2 are selling items at other MMO prices. Users need to bring down their prices in line with the games economy. A weapon for 30-80G is ridiculous. 5-10G is hard to come by and sounds more in line with how hard it is to get money.
Ummm guy.. We are all using the same Trade Post. There is no server or server market. it is all one giant market. Level 80 Yellows sell for like 20s-40s.
I wish yellows sold for 5-15 gold, that would be amazing.
In any case, I agree with the OP, right now the economy is going down the tube because of various factors (one major one is the diminishing returns systems on loot and events). Rares are quickly losing their value and becoming salvage items.
Between the anti-farming systems and the fact that so many mobs drop junk items, salvage items, and vendor trash items, it’s difficult to get any value out of your time killing things.
I wish yellows sold for 5-15 gold, that would be amazing.
In any case, I agree with the OP, right now the economy is going down the tube because of various factors (one major one is the diminishing returns systems on loot and events). Rares are quickly losing their value and becoming salvage items.
Between the anti-farming systems and the fact that so many mobs drop junk items, salvage items, and vendor trash items, it’s difficult to get any value out of your time killing things.
I completely agree that the market is crap, and it’s really frustrating that almost everything is better to vendor (except whites, oddly. People pay double vendor prices for some whites). But how does the diminishing returns on loot from DEs and farming cause this? It would be the opposite, wouldn’t it? The market is flooded with stuff, so people can’t charge much because the items are so plentiful. If the items were more rare, wouldn’t the prices then go up?
Greens and Blues aren’t worth much because people only need them as they level up, but most people get enough green and blue leveling gear via heart rewards, karma vendors, and random drops. It’s simple supply and demand.
Most of the greens and blues I don’t need I simply salvage and get back crafting mats. Those do sell. I gather everything I can as I level and salvage a lot of drops (I sell almost nothing to vendors). I keep anything related to cooking or tailoring (and have been able to level up those crafts for quite cheap as a result, since I have all my own mats) and what I don’t need I sell on the TP (and mats always sell). The economy in this game isn’t perfect, but greens and blues are not the problem right now.
I wish yellows sold for 5-15 gold, that would be amazing.
In any case, I agree with the OP, right now the economy is going down the tube because of various factors (one major one is the diminishing returns systems on loot and events). Rares are quickly losing their value and becoming salvage items.
Between the anti-farming systems and the fact that so many mobs drop junk items, salvage items, and vendor trash items, it’s difficult to get any value out of your time killing things.
Actually, I try fighting many things because of the salvage items and vendor trash since all that accumulated trash adds up. Salvage items also give materials like silk =)
Anyway, yellow is the new blue, white is the new gray, green is still green, and orange is the new purple ^_^
Something has gone wrong with the economy when everything green, blue and white is vendor trash… 1
Far from improving, the situation seems to be getting worse. Greens were not worthless when we started playing – they have become so. 2
Yellows are starting to lose relative value also. This is a slippery slope. 3
1 Something would be wrong if these items were in high demand and still worthless. When have you ever, in the process of playing this game, said to yourself “wow I need to get me some of that blue gear”? The simple interaction here is that the items you’re talking about are unwanted. You can occasionally upgrade yourself while leveling by checking out some greens, but it’s generally not worth the search time – you gain more by just continuing the leveling process.
2 At the extreme beginning of the game, Greens might not have been “worthless”, but I can tell you that their prices haven’t changed much since ~1 week after the game came out.
3 The real value of yellow gear is now tied up with the value of ectoplasm in most cases. Many yellows are still more “expensive”, but what’s happening is that buying a yellow comes with the opportunity cost of not saving money for an orange – which is what many many people are doing (hence the steady rise in the price of many exotics and the drop of price in yellows to match up more closely with ecto prices).
Main problem is users in GW2 are selling items at other MMO prices. Users need to bring down their prices in line with the games economy. A weapon for 30-80G is ridiculous. 5-10G is hard to come by and sounds more in line with how hard it is to get money. 1
1 There are many misconceptions here. Players in GW2 are not selling items at other MMO prices, they are selling items at GW2 prices. The only force determining the prices of goods of these expensive weapons are demand. The price of these goods has steadily risen since the the trading post first came up for more than an hour because players keep buying them up. If you can’t afford these weapons, the price does not need to fall to come in line with your personal economy. They are simply not priced for you, they are priced for those that can afford them.
I wish yellows sold for 5-15 gold, that would be amazing. 1
In any case, I agree with the OP, right now the economy is going down the tube because of various factors (one major one is the diminishing returns systems on loot and events). Rares are quickly losing their value and becoming salvage items. 2
1 If yellows sold for 5-15 gold, exotics would sell for hundreds of gold and precursors for thousands, and we’d be experiencing the same situation as we are now, apart from repair and travel costs seeming extremely cheap.
2 Items which players want are rising in price, and unwanted items are dropping in price. Items do not have any kind of inherent value apart from their vendor price. It can’t be expected that simply because some item’s name is written in yellow that someone will want it. The drops in this game are designed much like the drops in the original Guild Wars. “Worthless” item drops like whites and blues should be treated as gold drops. Just as you sometimes get 50c as a drop, so do you often get 1s or more as “drop” in that you can vendor it for that amount of gold.
^ A very well written an insightful post that, I hope everyone who has complaints about the economy reads.
I too noticed how everything is vendored now. At the start of the game and the betas, you could usually sell your blues and greens, but now everybody is selling them for a LOSS, so it’s to vendor it is.
GW2 is subject to very mild inflation in the secondary market, at most – the 15% transaction fee makes sure of that.
While deflation is possible I don’t see any realistic mechanisms for it in the short term; the only really major one is a massive shift in liquidity preference, and while you’ll see that in, say, the weeks leading up to a new expansion, there’s essentially zero reason to see it now.
What are are seeing, and will continue to see, is a shift in the demand structure of the game. In the first week there was a huge demand for leveling gear, one that showed huge spikes of pent up demand when the auction house went live – that demand has since subsided. That demand has been replaced by demand for end game gear and other high end items. The price structure of the game is shifting accordingly – you’ll see relative increases in price on higher end items, decreases in lower end items, with a middle point that will continue to move as the game matures.
There is a liquidity constraint holding some prices down, particularly on the high end. The legendary precursor weapons, for example, are probably much more valuable than their current prices would indicate – those prices are on the extreme edge of what people can offer.
A ‘central bank’ really wouldn’t have a lot to do in the GW2 economy. There’s no contract law or finance or long term agreements that make prices sticky; it’s more or less a pure cash-on-delivery commodity market with a currency that should be reasonable to treat at neutral. All they’d be doing is playing with the relative values of different asset classes – no different from what happens with any change in the drop tables.
I suspect some of the issue here is due to the lack of liquidity in the market.
/em rolls eyes
Seriously stop talking.
Whats going on can be summed up in the most simple of economic explanations.
Much higher supply than demand.
And thats fine. Greens exists primarily so players can occasionally find a good not great item while they are playing.
Now if your point was the rather simple one that the devs need to fiddle with the drop rate of rares you at least would be making a sensible point.
But to be honest with the existence of ’magic find" items thats hardly reasonable.
@MrMt and Kargion
Monetary policy is much more complicated than you think…I assume when you say loosening it means Anet putting more money into circulation… which will increase your income (assuming money is being circulated through quest reward), but not your purchasing power. Also, monetary policy is a mechanism that is used to stimulate production (GDP) subjected to interest rate, both which is non-existent in the game. Citing that as a reference to in-game economy is just plain wrong.
Rather than using big popular issues as a reference, the game economy can be described with simple basic economics of supply and demand, as detailed nicely by MF Panda.5874.