Guild Wars 2

Five suggestions for fixing the GW2 economy

• Make waypoint travel free for all points in a given zone once the zone is 100% clear (free WP become part of the reward for zone clear!). This gives people huge incentive to do the hearts!

• Reduce armor repair cost and make armor more durable outside of dungeons. Dungeons should have high payout and high risk IMO, although perhaps be much kinder in story mode.

• Allow more things to be purchased with Karma. There was a recent patch that made it so the armorsmith crafting supply NPC no longer sells salvage kits or gathering tools for karma. This patch should have made it so all the crafting supply NPC vendors sold their items for karma and not the other way around. At this point it seems karma is gathered only for high end gear down the road. I don’t understand how karma can be a respected currency when it seems the games system is geared around funneling players to spend coin or convert gems to coin

• Provide more data on TP for those looking to attempt to craft for profit. People who max a crafting skill can offer a service to those who have yet to max it. There is a problem with the current TP in that it does not show the seller what is selling. A simple rank column (as in popularity/number transactions) for all TP items would be an easy solution. It’s good for buyer and seller to know how popular an item is. Only knowing how many are available does not provide this data.

• Seed the Gems to coin rate a lot higher! It’s no secret this is controlled by ArenaNet “using an internal algorithm”. It’s a secret recipe we, we get it! Raise it! $10 USD should buy a player at minimum 8-9g not 2g!

Do all of these things and the blood will start pumping again.

Don’t raise the amount of gold given for gems because then this game will be a cash shop game.

Kaizer.7135:

Don’t raise the amount of gold given for gems because then this game will be a cash shop game.

Strongly disagree for a few reasons.

• One of the purposes of the Gems to coin option is to help stop illegal gold sellers which also reduces the number of bots in game. Illegal gold sellers are selling gold about 80% less than the authorized gem to coin conversion process is allowing. Illegal gold selling is horrible thing, I think we can all agree on that, but if the game studio is to provide a legal alternative they should try to find the sweet spot about 10-15% above than the illegal price of gold. You want to make those risk illegal gold buys take much less appealing. You make it harder for illegal gold sellers to farm the gold and harder for them to sell the gold and you reduce the problem.

• As it stands now 2.2g for $10 USD is about average. Want to be a commander in WvW? that will be 100g or about $500 USD. Want to buy a full set of rare cultural armor? That’s about $1000 USD. Want to buy all the non-account bound mats you need for a legendary. try $8,000 USD (you can buy a low-end car for that, put a down payment on a house). What a level 80 character gains from its owner spending $10 USD to convert gems to coin is roughly 10-15 dungeon runs worth of armor repairs and a maybe weeks worth of way point travel. You can also buy about one level worth of crafting mats. This system was suppose to be positioned to help those who work more than they can play have a way to pay to offer the time…. Not working and the cost of gems to coin is insanely high. It seem the current system is designed to mask this from the player.

• The current system encourages those wealthy in the real-world to spend. It caters to them. Did you happen to see commanders running around in WvW the first week of release? I did. How do you think they got there? Never forget that although for many of us squeezing $10-$20 for gems a month requires some planning, for others dropping $500 on a credit card for gems a week is nothing. Some are willing to spend even more, a lot more! Millionaires and Billionaires (and the older children of each) are in this game, playing and the gem store currently caters to them. It shouldn’t.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Kaizer.7135:

Don’t raise the amount of gold given for gems because then this game will be a cash shop game.

• One of the purposes of the Gems to coin option is to help stop illegal gold sellers which also reduces the number of bots in game.

yeah, how’s that working out? I’ve seen more bots than players at this point. There’s so many bots you don’t even have to do events, the bots do it for you. I can’t get into Queensdale’s normal channel because of all the bots, and even in the overflow channel they run rampant. They’ve set up FORTS with overclocked turrets and an army of ranger bots circling the area. This is the worst botting epidemic I’ve seen since Joymax with their sheer apathy to bots in Silk Road being so bad you couldn’t even log in because 80% of the population was automated.

Better idea, don’t do gem-for-coin. Half the items we need are bought with karma or dungeon tokens anyway, and if we get rid of buying gems with gold or trading gold for gems people won’t buy gold for that reason. Granted they’ll buy it to get better stuff, but there’s only so much you can purchase before you have to start using non-tradeable currencies.

What’s that? Can’t afford gems? Make all items found in the cash shop obtainable in some way via ingame, albeit more difficultly. Make clothing options expensive, or require a currency rarely found off mobs. make them tradeable in the trading post or worth karma. Cash shops should be about convenience. More inventory space, more bank space, fancier clothes, it’s all about how fast people get these things. Not everyone’s patient enough to hunt for what we need to get those fancy top hats or extra transmutation stones, and that’s what the cash shop is for. So far I’m not seeing anything that would suggest this is a buy-to-win game (i.e. anything that gives an upperhand to someone who bought things as opposed to someone who hasn’t) but it’s a fine line, and I firmly believe cash shop items should be strictly appearance and convenience-based, and all cash shop items should be obtainable in some way via ingame methods, just a lot more slowly or more difficultly.

The point Same is making Amaranth is that the bots/gold sellers are successful because the exchange rate that ArenaNet has is so poor. So ArenaNets exchange of cash for gems for gold is doing nothing to curtail people buying from gold sellers.

spend 10 bucks get 2g from ArenaNet.
spend 10 bucks get 10g from gold seller.

If ArenaNet were offering around 7g or so per 10 bucks people would be far more inclined to ignore the gold sellers for the safe and legal avenue of buying from ArenaNet and not gold sellers.

Imaginos.3756:

spend 10 bucks get 2g from ArenaNet.
spend 10 bucks get 10g from gold seller.

If ArenaNet were offering around 7g or so per 10 bucks people would be far more inclined to ignore the gold sellers for the safe and legal avenue of buying from ArenaNet and not gold sellers.

Yeah I mean that would not ruin the economy. How about you stick to the ToS that you agreed to when you started playing the game. I’d rather not see everyone carrying legendaries by monday morning because the gem to gold ratio tripled overnight to satisfy the gamers who want everything straight away. Why would I bother playing the game, putting time in if I can buy all things i want for less than $100 or whatever the cost might be, if people want to spend $500-1000 then let them, that is their choice.

The OP sounds from his points that he wants everything sooner rather than later and does not want to work for it either. The only valid point made in the 1st post was the extra info on the TP, that point has merit and should be discussed, don’t turn this into a thread of gimme, gimme, gimme on in game prices.

Just selling the gold in the official store lower price will be a good begin.

There’s a money crisis? Are you serious? I’ve made 3g this morning SITTING in Lion’s Arch. I make gold when I farm stuff.

Are you going broke because you’re using every dime you have to buy exotics? If so, your argument is invalid because you’re not earning the items. I find that when I actually pve I see everything as free gold. Port to Orr, random Orichalcum ore, 1 hit of that paid for my travel. Gold everywhere. Mobs everywhere. Mobs drop things so randomly that I can’t ignore them because I know that the mob I ignore will drop a rare.