Guild Wars 2

There is no real gold sink that I can think of on this game which creates a real horrible problem of prices on everything that isn’t mass produced/gained to always rise in price, the same heavily applies to gold>gem conversion rate as in the last month or 2 the conversion rate again has gone from 1gold>15 gems to 1 gold>11 gems and it will only increase due to no gold sinks.

Lets look at what we do have, we have teleport fees which are almost non existant due to how insanely low the cost is, you pay around 1-5 silver at max and thats from teleporting from 1 side of the map to another, this could easily be made into a gold sink by increasing the cost to at least x4 of the current amount as let’s be honest it really isn’t even hard to make a single gold anymore with the amount of gold generation that’s currently in the game now.
We also have repair fees…but those are simply laughable due to how pointlessly low they are, it seriously may as well just be free to repair at the current rate it’s at.
NPC Crafting mats that you need to buy from them for the odd thing here and there, these are decent sinks but it’s not something that’s a general commonly used thing to be considered a gold sink, also a lot of people don’t bother to craft and ascended weapons/Armour isn’t enough of a reason to for a lot of players.
We also have salvage kits from the merchant if people arn’t using the blacklion salvage kits and the harvesting items that cost up to 4 measly silver which is also countered by the gem stores infinite harvesting items.

I think that’s all the gold sinks in GW2…either that or I’m seriously brain farting as I can’t think of anything, if there is then it’s so minor that it simply doesn’t matter and isn’t really much of a gold sink.

What I’m noticing is that anything that could be potentially considered a gold sink goes straight into the gem store, so instead of people buying potential items like a hair style/colour kit, body recustom hit, face kit, transmutation stones, time limited finishers instead of the permanent ones from the gem store, more fancy armours buyable from merchants any anything else that players would want to buy that can create something to destroy gold out of the game.

We have such easy ways to generate money into the game such as doing your instances to get gold on completion and the consistent champion farming trains that is consistently generating money into the game with very little places for it to be disposed and before people get confused thinking “well buying items from the trading post is a gold sink!”…no it isn’t because the gold is landing in someone elses pocket instead of being took out of the game completely.

Solution? Anet needs to stop being greedy by sticking every possible useful item into the gem store and start introducing ways that we can spend our money on an NPC, I’m already thinking it’s done totally on purpose with the theory of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so instead of the poor get poorer (example being people that need to go to work so they cant play all day) they put them selves on par with the rich by selling Gems to them, thus generating Anet more money (which is fine as they obviously need money to maintain the game and their jobs) and gold consistently circulating among players with no NPC to spend it on.

If you are having problems getting rid of your gold, I’ll happily bear that burden for you. Just send it all right over.

The gem store is a necessary evil as this is a non-subscription model game, but I get your point. I would like to see them “move” some of the useful items into the Gold market after awhile. Or tweak the rules a bit. Example: The infinite harvesting tools. Buy them with Gems, they are account bound and can be used by any of your characters. Buy them with Gold, soul bound to a single toon. While I am always on the fence about spending real life money on Gems to expand inventory/bank/etc, I would like to limit it to $15/month (same as a typical sub), and frankly, that doesn’t buy much of anything in the Gem Store. Just not worth it.

As much as I hate the gem store, it acts as precisely the type of gold sink you’re asking for, assuming you’re trading gold for gems.

Gems either get spent on gem store items, which removes the original gold entirely, or it gets converted back into gold at a drastic reduction.

The only way the gem store doesn’t act as a gold sink is for the players who successfully speculate on gem prices.

The largest gold sink in the game is the TP fees. It’s 5% to list, and then a 10% tax on anything that sells. That’s money that is removed from the game completely.

But on the whole, I agree with your argument. Inflation is out of control, and that’s going to start being a real barrier to new players trying to enter the game.

Raising WP fees and Repair fees would indeed draw more money out of the game, but hurts the “poor” players more than the rich players, which exacerbates the problem for new players entering the game.

The problem needs to be addressed on both sides. There is too much money coming into the game through repeatables like champ farming and dungeon runs, and not enough leaving the game at any point.

The best short-term solution, as you stated, as NPC gold purchases. Perhaps ANet should send the Bazaar back to Tyria with NPCs selling items for gold. The Bazaar could stay until/unless enough gold was siphoned off to roll inflation back a bit. Or some similar limited-time event that would accomplish the same thing.

Honestly, I think inflation is the single greatest danger GW2 faces at the moment, and I haven’t heard any of the devs address it.

Crash.9186:

(snip)

….and before people get confused thinking “well buying items from the trading post is a gold sink!”…no it isn’t because the gold is landing in someone elses pocket instead of being took out of the game completely.

This is not true.

15% of the value of the item that was purchased is removed from the game completely due to the 5% listing fee and the 10% sales fee. Only 85% of the value of the item is given to the seller.

If you consider the thousands (probably more like millions) of items that are transacted on the Black Lion Trading Company per day, it amounts to quite a lot.

This is the single largest gold sink in the game.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

15% of the value of the item that was purchased is removed from the game completely due to the 5% listing fee and the 10% sales fee. Only 85% of the value of the item is given to the seller.

If you consider the thousands (probably more like millions) of items that are transacted on the Black Lion Trading Company per day, it amounts to quite a lot.

This is the single largest gold sink in the game.

I guess you didn’t see my post. It’s the one immediately above yours.