Guild Wars 2

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of newish sandboxy MMOs that seem to be Korean p2win grindfests are releasing, while others are not, but a lot of these MMOs advertise the fact that they have a “player driven economy”.

And I’m not entirely sure what that means. To me it sounds like crafting and getting players involved in crafting, which is difficult in “themepark” MMOs. So then it got me thinking about what drives GW2’s economy in comparison, and whether having a player driven economy is a good or bad thing, and whether or not GW2’s economy is driven from a source that makes the game good. While I know much about real life economics, I’m not that knowledgable about MMO economies.

So lets discuss this, what are the implications of having a player driven economy, and how does GW2’s economy match up to that ideal? And is GW2’s system a good one?

I think we can have a very interesting discussion about this topic and I look forward to learning more about these terms and classifications and understanding these systems better.

In Guild Wars 2, you can do any type of content and get any type of item to drop for you. You can also do any type of content and get gold to drop for you.

This means that the Trading Post exists so that you can easily trade your gold and unwanted items for other player’s items and gold.

The “player driven” aspect means that you can play whatever content you like, then trade the results with other players for the rewards you like.

almost every MMO has a partially player driven economy, its just a marketing term.

But as to what drives GW2 economy? Items of high demand, everything elses value is based on its relationship to items of high demand.

mtpelion.4562:

The “player driven” aspect means that you can play whatever content you like, then trade the results with other players for the rewards you like.

Alas, this hasn’t been the case with Fossils and the Ambrite weapons. :/

1.Item skins, the ones in high demand are rarer and harder to get.
2.Getting basic exotic gear, easy enough to buy those from TP.
3.Getting ascended gear, grinding to level up crafts.
4.Finishing a Legendary, it mostly takes determination and time.

Because there is a strong belief that certain rewards should only come from completing certain content. Dungeon and WvW armor for instance. LS episodes have also had skins and items only been available from LS content. And there is a push by some to make this more common place.

Zaxares.5419:

mtpelion.4562:

The “player driven” aspect means that you can play whatever content you like, then trade the results with other players for the rewards you like.

Alas, this hasn’t been the case with Fossils and the Ambrite weapons. :/

Yeah, I’m not too thrilled about that nonsense myself.

In answer to the original question, I think the term “player-driven economy” is not very useful. It’s like saying, “water-filled ocean.”

• To have an economy, you need players.
• To have a reasonable economy, you need market prices, which means allowing trading to be affected by supply and demand.

Therefore, any MMO economy will be, almost by definition, driven by players.

Supply + Demand

Player driven, as in prices are settled on by them with minimum intervention by the game developers (other than +1c over vendor price with the vendor price set by the devs). Sure the devs can control supply sources and tweak demand though new uses for raw materials but the going rate for each item is determined entirely by players through their trades.