Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone, I would like to make a suggestion which I believe will help in controlling inflation (rising prices of items) in Guild Wars 2 economy. I know this suggestion will generate a lot of opposition but I hope we can all have a healthy discussion rather than a name calling fest.

The suggestion is: Make items account bound on acquire and soul bound on use – when they are purchased from Trading Post. (Some items need not be soul bound, for example crafting materials)

It means the person who got the item as a drop will sell it on Trading Post and the person who needs that item will buy it. Once he buys it item will become account bound and once he uses it on a character it will become soul bound. This way the market manipulators won’t be able to artificially shoot up prices of items as they cannot buy massive quantities for reselling later anymore. Long term this will lead to steadier prices. Prices may go up in future, but this increase will be more of a gradual one and not an overnight quadrupling of prices.

What benefit is there in a few individuals hoarding up all the money and driving up prices for everyone? This practice adds so much harm to the GW2 economy while giving no real benefit in return. Although when done in moderation the effects of this practice are not that severe, the element of human greed usually takes people much farther than moderation.

Since the game allows it to happen, I do not consider market manipulation as an illegal practice. I am not saying that the people who do it are exploiters. The point I am trying to make is that it is something that adds a lot of harm without adding any real benefits for an normal GW2 player. Some of my friends make money by manipulating the market too and I don’t think of them as bad people. So do not take my suggestion as a personal attack. I personally do not consider market manipulation as fun, it is not something that I enjoy doing. But some of you may find it quite enjoyable as it allows you to think of various different ways of staying one step ahead and playing the supply/demand line of Gw2 economy.

I also know that there might be a chance that my suggestion may not be technically possible to implement in game due to some coding or other restrictions.

Let’s have a healthy discussion about this.

simply no. if anything, that would cause prices to rise a lot and even cause a real shortage of products to buy. Your understandings of how markets work are so wrong I do not even know where to start. Please, I do not mean this as an insult, but really, that is economy 101, read up a bit on it if you are really interested.

I’m sorry but it is obvious that you don’t truly understand how the economy works. This would be market suicide.

Your idea would have the opposite effect of what you intended.

Algreg, Jrunyon and mtpelion. Could any of you how this will actually increase prices?

Are you basing your assumption on a theory or have actually seen it happen in real life?

I mean not all economic theories work well in real life.

Also thank you for taking the time to reply.

Is there problematic inflation in GW2?

The main thing you need to know about the economy in this game is that there are two major forces:
1. Inflation – Every time you do a quest, kill a mob, or complete a dungeon you are “printing money”. Players that farm gold are the main source of inflation in the game.
2. Deflation – Every time money is deleted from the game you are fighting inflation. The single largest source of money being deleted is Trading Post listing and selling fees. This means that the greatest weapon in the game against inflation is having a lot of transactions.

The problem with your idea is that all items will only be able to be sold once, which will drastically reduce the number of transactions being processed. This will in turn eliminate the majority of the money deletion allowing inflation to run rampant.

The other issue is that since there are less transactions, demand will quickly outpace supply leading to overall price increases on the items that are available.

Auroma.9126:

Algreg, Jrunyon and mtpelion. Could any of you how this will actually increase prices?

Are you basing your assumption on a theory or have actually seen it happen in real life?

I mean not all economic theories work well in real life.

Also thank you for taking the time to reply.

Soul bound and account bound items take them out of the supply. I think you are thinking about rare + exotic items only.

Let’s be honest, this isn’t about inflation.. you want to limit TP traders. lol, A facade for jealousy.

However, by eliminating traders you are increasing market friction, the spread between items will be horrible.

mtpelion.4562:

The main thing you need to know about the economy in this game is that there are two major forces:
1. Inflation – Every time you do a quest, kill a mob, or complete a dungeon you are “printing money”. Players that farm gold are the main source of inflation in the game.
2. Deflation – Every time money is deleted from the game you are fighting inflation. The single largest source of money being deleted is Trading Post listing and selling fees. This means that the greatest weapon in the game against inflation is having a lot of transactions.

The problem with your idea is that all items will only be able to be sold once, which will drastically reduce the number of transactions being processed. This will in turn eliminate the majority of the money deletion allowing inflation to run rampant.

The other issue is that since there are less transactions, demand will quickly outpace supply leading to overall price increases on the items that are available.

Yes your point 1 makes much sense. Now that I think about it, major spikes in prices occur when some people farm a lot of gold in short time. Market Manipulators sense this and they will buy out specific items from supply line and re-list them at a much higher price. If it wasn’t for the sudden influx of easy gold, people would not pay such high prices and the attempt to manipulate the market will fail. Either the price of those items will come down or people will find a cheaper alternative.

Regarding point 2, I do agree that TP must be the biggest source of money deletion in game. But it does leads to polarization of wealth as an average player who does not farms much nor plays the TP will have to pay more for items and a market manipulator with tons of gold will only get richer and richer, increasing his manipulating power.

Then again I think one assumption that I made wrong was that market manipulators only get more and more profit out of TP. There may be some instances where their attempt to manipulate fails and they end up losing a lot of gold. Although 85% of that gold would still remain with the first sellers, the spread of gold in the market would be a more even one.

Thank you for clarifying mtpelion.

Auroma.9126:

Yes your point 1 makes much sense. Now that I think about it, major spikes in prices occur when some people farm a lot of gold in short time. Market Manipulators sense this and they will buy out specific items from supply line and re-list them at a much higher price. If it wasn’t for the sudden influx of easy gold, people would not pay such high prices and the attempt to manipulate the market will fail. Either the price of those items will come down or people will find a cheaper alternative.

Regarding point 2, I do agree that TP must be the biggest source of money deletion in game. But it does leads to polarization of wealth as an average player who does not farms much nor plays the TP will have to pay more for items and a market manipulator with tons of gold will only get richer and richer, increasing his manipulating power.

Then again I think one assumption that I made wrong was that market manipulators only get more and more profit out of TP. There may be some instances where their attempt to manipulate fails and they end up losing a lot of gold. Although 85% of that gold would still remain with the first sellers, the spread of gold in the market would be a more even one.

Thank you for clarifying mtpelion.

Wealth Concentration is something that will always happen in a free market. Some people are just really good at trading, plus money has a tendency to “attract” more money. Wealth Concentration can cause economic stagnation in the real world, but in the game we don’t have this issue because we can’t actually own property or control the creation of goods.

mtpelion.4562:

Auroma.9126:

Yes your point 1 makes much sense. Now that I think about it, major spikes in prices occur when some people farm a lot of gold in short time. Market Manipulators sense this and they will buy out specific items from supply line and re-list them at a much higher price. If it wasn’t for the sudden influx of easy gold, people would not pay such high prices and the attempt to manipulate the market will fail. Either the price of those items will come down or people will find a cheaper alternative.

Regarding point 2, I do agree that TP must be the biggest source of money deletion in game. But it does leads to polarization of wealth as an average player who does not farms much nor plays the TP will have to pay more for items and a market manipulator with tons of gold will only get richer and richer, increasing his manipulating power.

Then again I think one assumption that I made wrong was that market manipulators only get more and more profit out of TP. There may be some instances where their attempt to manipulate fails and they end up losing a lot of gold. Although 85% of that gold would still remain with the first sellers, the spread of gold in the market would be a more even one.

Thank you for clarifying mtpelion.

Wealth Concentration is something that will always happen in a free market. Some people are just really good at trading, plus money has a tendency to “attract” more money. Wealth Concentration can cause economic stagnation in the real world, but in the game we don’t have this issue because we can’t actually own property or control the creation of goods.

That is true. Thanks for all your input.

Wealth Concentration can cause price rise for high end rare items with higher demand than supply. If the market for such items becomes accessible only for the rich part of the playerbase, then the prices will follow the paying capacity of those with enough wealth to take part in that market. However, preventing resale of goods is not the way to combat this issue.