Guild Wars 2

Since September, the value of gold in the gem exchange has decreased by about 50%. I find plenty of ways to spend what I have and I like very much the economic sytem in play except how the valuation of gems has increased.

Not long after the game launched, I purchased gems with real money so I could open the Black Lion chests. The contents were severely disappointing. I would rather have had 50 copper at the time. Now, I have a stack of unopened chests. I just did not know what to use gems for. Crafting near 400 and other unlockables now makes me interested in buying gems but my finances are not in the best shape.

Please consider capping the amount of gold and gems held in each account. Please also consider reducing the drop rate for rare and exotic items as users approach the gold cap. That would limit gold deflation and encourage players to consume the game money as it was meant.

Regarding purchase of gems with real currency, I understand that deflation of gold with respect to gems will encourage players to spend real money but caution that the cows have already left the barn on that front. I suggest, instead, offering precursor weapons, or some other extremely rare item, for real money to let players decide whether to farm their way to legendary weapons, or pay real money. Doing that would also help set legendary item value, hopefully stabilizing the value range of farmed versus real money.

First, I think you’re conflating terms here and it’s making your post a bit difficult to follow.

Inflation = An increase in the money supply and/or an increase in prices. They are usually synonymous, but are not lock-step because of other economic concepts such as stickyness.

Deflation = A decrease in the money supply and/or a decrease in prices. Once again, this is affected by the same principles as inflation.

What you’re talking about with gold is specifically inflation. An increase in the supply, resulting in an increase in prices. Gold in this game has been subject to rampant inflation because there are more ways to obtain it (introduce to the economy) than there are ways to dispose of it (leave the economy through gold sinks).

I think the only real way to “solve” this problem is to have prices which are currently fixed become subject to the amount of currency present in the economy. Unfortunately, games which introduce currency through a central source tend to be subject to inflation. Players will either compensate by raising the prices of their goods and/or using in game items which are scarce enough to hold value (ectos from GW1 for example) as a means of currency.

Forcing a hard cap on in-game currency further causes players to search for other means of retaining value, and could actually spur the use of items as a value holder and cause further inflation.

Lolnotacat, you are right. I should have just said inflation rather than gold deflation but the economy is also based on gem value. Gems are the actual currency, in my opinion. Gold and gems are both consumable but only gems are tied to real money. Gold is an exchange media between consumable items so it is a currency, just not a currency tied to real value. That is why it has lost value in terms of gems.

Gold in-game actually behaves like paper money IRL. Gems in-game behave more like gold IRL. None of that really matters except, as you say, rewards in gold are fixed, meaning, as gold loses value, events and item drops do, too. All I am doing is suggesting more ways to force gold out of the system and hoping to tie it closer to real money. Trading real money for gems was, and still is, not very rewarding but I do not know how that can be adequately fixed with the amount of gems already in the system and meager rewards associated with trading real money for them. If the developers were to auction gems in terms of real money, that would help. A second class of consumable token for use on extremely rare items or content expansion could be sold for fixed prices.

I still like the idea of caps on gems and gold even though I rather enjoyed the fact that basic weapons and armor cost almost the same from L2 to L80 rather than incrementing a bit more than it did for each level. There is too much gold in the system but I believe gems were vastly overvalued in terms of real money and that has led just as much to this imbalance.