Guild Wars 2

INTRODUCTION:

(if you want you can just skip down to my suggestions section instead)

As we all know, inflation becomes an inevitable problem in mmorpgs. As such I am also assuming everyone here knows the basic definition of inflation which is the prices of goods/services become increasingly higher as more money is introduced into the market and money loses its value.
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BACKGROUND INFO:

Before I delve into solutions to prevent hyperinflation for a more controlled, slow, and steady form of inflation (since it can’t be truly avoided as gold is constantly being generated and introduced into the market) I want to discuss the monetary value of money for reference and background which will back the premise of some future suggestions and it will provide more insight into what I am about to implore.

What gives money (or any item) it’s value? How we percieve it, and how it compares to other currencies/items as it is relative to everything else. In an mmorpg, currency is basically fiat money, this means that its value is useless and its only purpose is to put a measurement on exchange. moving on to inflation, since money is relative, the more money that is generated/printed and introduced to the market, the less it’s worth which means the cost of something becomes higher in order to make up for it.

For example: say a loaf of bread costs $1, after some time and inflation as more money saturates the market, that same loaf of bread is now $2. the bread is still the same, but since the amount of money in the market has doubled, the currency’s purchasing power was cut in half and thus it costs more to buy it. Take a look at Germany, a loaf of bread in 1918 costed 0.6 of a mark, in 1921 it costed 250 marks, worse, in 1923 a loaf of bread costed 201 billion marks. By that time their money was worthless due to printing too much money.
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TLDR: As more money is generated and introduced into the market, the value of it goes down, and items end up costing higher prices.

SOLUTION:

Okay, so now that we know that if:
amount of money in market increases —> value decreases --> price increases

Then that means:
amount of money in the market decreases —> value increases --> price decreases

of course you don’t want prices too low either, so you need to strike a balance, but what that equilibrium is I’m not going to delve into.

But now we know our solution: to create a gold sink. A gold sink is a way to remove gold from the market in order to combat inflation.

WHAT ANET HAS SO FAR:

Here’s where my real and actual post comes into play. some suggestions I have in order to remove gold from the game in order to ensure a steady slow inflation right instead of hyperinflation.

What made me think about posting this was when i was thinking about the gold/gem conversion rates. Of course as we all know, Anet is in charge of the changing rates and will ensure that there’s a 30% loss if you try to convert back and forth, this is a way to remove gems and gold from the market (and so people don’t try to play it trying to make money), but mainly gold (as well as stopping goldfarmers but that’s something different from the topic).

Anet also does this by taking some money every time you post something in the Auction House. so there are already some things set in place, but i don’t think they alone will be significant enough.
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SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR MORE AND FUN GOLD SINKS:

This is what my post is really about, the suggestions.

Gambling House:

Pretty simple, you use gold to play gambling minigames. The gambling house would pretty much work like a casino in which it is purposely built so that it has a certain payout percentage, and keeps the rest of the wagers. It is possible to win and make money off the gambling house obviously, but overall for the majority of the population, the payout will be less than what is wagered obviously. This can include some classical games like blackjack (using a shoe consisting of 4-8 decks) and slots, to moa races which would be like betting on a horse where the odds change depending on the changing bets, to maybe some made up minigames. There could be a betting cap per game and even a daily betting cap.

(kind of like the cow cannon thing where you can bet against that one npc where the cow will land xD)

the only problem with this is people may argue for those with gambling addictions and may spend real money on gems to convert to gold to play this. that is what the betting caps and daily caps would be for. Someone may argue legal reasons saying Anet would have to get some casino license, to which before it’s said I will dispute it by saying you can buy gems with real money, but you can’t convert gems back to real money, and thus it would be stuck as virtual currency.

PvP Gladiator Unranked Tournaments:

This would be similar to sPvP. You’ll be able to easily queue up against say 10 random people, everyone puts 10 gold on the line (100 g total). Anet will say take 30% (30 g), leaving 70 g in prize money, say 1st gets 35 g, 2nd gets 20 g, and 3rd gets 15 g, everyone else recieves 0. It would be a free for all of sorts in a timed map that will base the winner off of kill/death ratios. similarly this can even be done for maybe even duels, or team battles.

The only argument i can see against this is maybe unofficial alliances during the free for all match, which i can not defend. but keep in mind this is for gold betting and not actual ranking or anything. from the system I laid out, an alliance can only be 2-3 people if theyre all strangers which can maybe be discouraged by disabling /say and /map during the match. or 6 people if they all happened to know each other and all got the same queue for the same one and divide the 70g afterwards by 6 which i doubt would even be worth it, and would almost never happen.

In the case of team vs. team, or dueling for gold it shouldn’t be a problem.

FAR OFF IN THE FUTURE IF INFLATION BECOMES TOO GRANDIOSE:

This is not the main purpose of my thread, but figured this may be an interesting idea in a very extreme case where it may be necessary to do such an extreme thing. I’m sure some people will try to poke holes in this of course. I call this, the economic reset….

In the case that too much gold is saturating the market, making everything cost far too much in price, (hopefully it will never happen, but in such in an extreme and maybe even unpopular case) I’d propose a reset. This won’t be a complete wipe, of course not don’t be ridiculous, I was thinking it would have something to do with proportionally changing the amount of gold everyone had by some conversion rate. to stop people from trying to buy up items and then npcing them afterwards, any items prior to the reset would have no sell price to npcs, that’s what the big major heads up warning is for, to let people know about that. this means everyone would sell off items as they would want prior to this reset.

Obviously there are a few things you could probably point out that would make some people upset, but this is an extreme fix with plenty of warning time, essentially you won’t lose how much buying power you have compared to everyone else though… until you factor the flat economy of npcs and quests.

So, does anyone have suggestions for cool fun gold sinks to help the in game economy?

Enjoy your finance degree did we…. or studying game economics for your dissertation?

Nothing in game has huge monetary value or is not easily obtained so cant see the market getting inflated. But dont forget to save the page for your homework impressive lecture.

I think gold sinks have been surprisingly efficient so far, and I don’t think that inflation will be a problem for a good while. Everything is cheap and accessible. Perhaps even too cheap given that most things are sold at floor value in the TP. I suppose that a global market also helps with this, as it is harder to shake down.

In my view Gold-Gem conversion rates are your basic inflation meter, and it’s been doing fine.

They know how this works. This can be seen in the fact that you have to buy the gathering tools, for example. It’s just a way to you to buy the things you gather before you actually gather them. Also, notice how you need more and more expensive tools as you gather more valuable commodities.

There are already too many gold sinks;

At lvl 50 it costs over 1 silver just to TP across a single map, within the same map. Repair costs also start adding up. Gold2Gems is going to suck up huge amounts of wealth. Trait books, salvage kits, gathering tools, tin/coal/thread/etc, guild armor, etc. etc.

Dats.1208:

Enjoy your finance degree did we…. or studying game economics for your dissertation?

Nothing in game has huge monetary value or is not easily obtained so cant see the market getting inflated. But dont forget to save the page for your homework impressive lecture.

the monetary value of anything is subective.

@everyone else: Things may seem expensive as of now since the game is still new. give it about a year though. maybe not implement these gold sinks now so the market can inflate itself a little bit, but after a while they might want to consider putting them in to stabilize the market. and if they have a way to measure it: see how much gold is generated and how much drained out of the economy on a weekly/monthly basis and see if they can get them as equal as possible.

Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills). Actually i find this pretty anoying since it will force you to do pve just not to go bankrupt. They have so many gold sinks and all they have to do later is to adjust the price since inflation is inevitable. Dying is the biggest gold sink in this game: repair + resurect at waypoint. Thank God in WvW resurect is free.

“Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills)”

… dying in WvW breaks your armor?

Gambling house would open them up to gambling laws as the in-game currency is tied to actual currency.

paultimate.8790:

Gambling house would open them up to gambling laws as the in-game currency is tied to actual currency.

i was thinking about this. and i think it wont be too much of an issue since even though you can buy gems and convert to gold, you can convert back to gems, but not to cash and thus it will be stuck as virtual game currency and would go through a loop hole.

coffeemancer.2450:

“Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills)”

… dying in WvW breaks your armor?

Yep.

I see things getting cheaper. Some things are just starting to rise up to their proper value. The gem/gold conversion is not inflating. All in all, I don’t see any inflating. Supply is flooding the market, so prices are dropping. It’s a buyers market.

coffeemancer.2450:

“Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills)”

… dying in WvW breaks your armor?

Yes it does.

There is actually gambling in the game already.
In charr area, there is one Cow race thing, where you can bet 25 silver for the victor.
I think it was like 1/4 chance in winning.

@gambling already in game

There is also another Charr in Diessa Plateau who shoots cows out of his catapult and lets you bet 50 silver where it will land.

Detahmaio.2014:

coffeemancer.2450:

“Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills)”

… dying in WvW breaks your armor?

Yes it does.

I get a bunch of money back from participating in any event though. Pretty much 1 event covers the damage to so many parts of my armor

Ziggy.7319:

INTRODUCTION:
inflation (since it can’t be truly avoided as gold is constantly being generated and introduced into the market)

That’s only half of it: money is also being consumed and I’m sure Anet has many money-sink ideas for when the time comes.

I’m pretty sure this game has more gold sinks than any other game I can think of…
15% auction house fees are pretty steep.
Each character atm requires at least 2 or 3 gold to purchase the skill manuals.
WvW seige and upgrades are gold sinks (not to mention the 100g commander manuals)
Waypoint travel
Repair costs
Gold → Gems
Legendary Weapons (In the form of crafting mats, though…)

Strongback.6420:

There is actually gambling in the game already.
In charr area, there is one Cow race thing, where you can bet 25 silver for the victor.
I think it was like 1/4 chance in winning.

if you read more than two sentences you’d see i mentioned that

@gambling already in game

There is also another Charr in Diessa Plateau who shoots cows out of his catapult and lets you bet 50 silver where it will land.

if you read more than two sentences you’d see i mentioned that

Rolo.9248:

Ziggy.7319:

INTRODUCTION:
inflation (since it can’t be truly avoided as gold is constantly being generated and introduced into the market)

That’s only half of it: money is also being consumed and I’m sure Anet has many money-sink ideas for when the time comes.

did you even read beyond that point?

I’m pretty sure this game has more gold sinks than any other game I can think of…
15% auction house fees are pretty steep.
Each character atm requires at least 2 or 3 gold to purchase the skill manuals.
WvW seige and upgrades are gold sinks (not to mention the 100g commander manuals)
Waypoint travel
Repair costs
Gold -> Gems
Legendary Weapons (In the form of crafting mats, though…)

which is good. we’ll have to see though when more and more people level characters and alts to 80, and the game has been out for a while. then they can monitor the cash flow in/out of the market weekly/monthly and try to make them about equal.

Gambling house would open them up to gambling laws as the in-game currency is tied to actual currency.

i should’ve said this to you earlier, but for shame you didn’t bother reading completely either like those others.

That’s an interesting description on preventing inflation. As what others had pointed out, I think this game has quite a number of gold sink mechanism in place. In particular, gem exchange is an interesting mechanism. They could just adjust the exchange rate or make special offers to suck the gold out of the economy any time. Or, they could easily introduce ultra expansive crafting ingredients needed for legendary items (not sure if it’s already there). This is one game that I’m not all too worried about inflation as they obviously designed the game with that in mind too.

Detahmaio.2014:

coffeemancer.2450:

“Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills)”

… dying in WvW breaks your armor?

Yes it does.

Well umm… wow. Unbelievable. Hopefully this gets patched out fast.

coffeemancer.2450:

Detahmaio.2014:

coffeemancer.2450:

“Try play some WvW and you will see how fast your money will drop (repair bills)”

… dying in WvW breaks your armor?

Yes it does.

Well umm… wow. Unbelievable. Hopefully this gets patched out fast.

The solution is to stop mindlessly zerging and start playing smart. I’ve made 15g just by WvW’ing (and that’s after all repair costs).

Also +1 for gambling house! (player driven + taxes)

I tried WvW for the first time….don’t think it’s too hard to not die….

Wazabi.1439:

I tried WvW for the first time….don’t think it’s too hard to not die….

It is hard if you’re completely braindead. WvW is mostly filled with braindead people so I can see why there are complains for that aspect of WvW.

Your premise is entirely wrong “(since it can’t be truly avoided as gold is constantly being generated and introduced into the market)”
Anet completely controls the environment, this is NOT the real world, gold can be lost via gold-sinks where is this doesn’t happen in the real world, inflation is as simple as managing the number of gold sinks in game, case closed.

Marrond.1385:

Wazabi.1439:

I tried WvW for the first time….don’t think it’s too hard to not die….

It is hard if you’re completely braindead. WvW is mostly filled with braindead people so I can see why there are complains for that aspect of WvW.

Much like many that whines about things being broken when it is they who failed to master it.

Wazabi.1439:

Much like many that whines about things being broken when it is they who failed to master it.

Well there are many broken things in WvW that are valid and have nothing to do with skill. For example Retaliation vs Siege machines is broken. Not because someone is good or bad. It’s because anty-infantry weapon is rendered useless vs infantry and because there is no way to counter this, i.e. you can’t put retaliation on your gates and why is gonna be fixed. This is why people invented catapulting gate from inside, because of knockback and shttons HP catapult has.

How about dying and repair costs? Simply play smarter. As I’ve mentioned WvW is my main source of gold income.

hence many…not all.