Guild Wars 2

The “fractured” preview talks about adding coin rewards to fractals. I suspect that’s appropriate (to bring them in line with dungeons if for no other reason), but it’s got me thinking about coin rewards in general. Dungeons didn’t use to offer so much coin, either; and in general, it seems a lot easier to amass coin now than when I started playing.

This is a bit concerning, because other than being a medium of exchange between players, coin isn’t used for that much. There’s waypoints, repairs, salvage kits, harvesting tools, etc. but those costs are tiny compared to what you can already make doing almost anything (at least in PvE). There’s a few big-ticket items like cultural armor and the icy runestones in legendary weapons, but a lot of players are probably never going to get those.

It seems to me that most of what people want money for is actually in the form of high-quality equipment, crafting materials (or their derivatives), and gem store items—all purchased at market-driven prices. This makes me worried that increasing coin rewards is just going to cause inflation and trap us in a red queen’s race rather than actually helping players get the stuff they want.

Hopefully the coin increases I’ve noticed are based on a principled analysis of the time/reward ratios of various game activities and are just designed to bring some underperforming areas up to par, in which case keep at it. You’ve probably got more than enough economic expertise on the team to figure this stuff out without my input. I’d just like to be sure this isn’t being ignored…