Guild Wars 2

That you are getting so kittened off by this discussion does not mean I’m trying to do that. I’m asking for an explanation to justify your claim that bots are ruining the economy because you keep saying that, but have yet to provide adequate justification for it.

If you’re going to get upset because people who disagree with your reasoning are questioning it, you shouldn’t have made claims based on that reasoning in the first place.

Agree 100%. The only thing stopping players from setting loot for a copper is vendor prices. There is an economy for crafting, exotics, and runes. Nothing else.

Hippocampus.8470:

If you’re going to get upset because people who disagree with your reasoning are questioning it, you shouldn’t have made claims based on that reasoning in the first place.

..Ok

There are many ways to up the rewards without rewarding bots.

Karma:
We have decent Karma rewards from 1-80, but they fade out at level 80 greens and then come back as 64.000 exotics. no in between, no rares, no special skins, no nothing. Cultural weapons try the best to close the gap a tiny bit. But compared to what you can toss in the mystic forge, karma is not impressive when it comes to range.

Mystic Coins
Every newbie from 1-79 gets this reward, but outside of specialty recipes, they are utterly useless. Even if you do have the coins, you still need to commit a lot of skill points as well. This is a resource ArenaNet hands out more reluctantly than ectos, yet their price is rock bottom low. Not good for daily rewards.

Account Bound
The game has this mechanic, why isn’t it used for handing out better rewards? More rewards for everybody and nothing to work with for bots. Recently I got two “Strong Amulets” from dungeon chests which were soulbound of acquire, so partially, the game is already doing it.

Reading this entire thread i am coming to the conclusion that Botters are not significant of a problem as of yet. There is many mechanics in place that destroy the efficient aspects of botting code unless they are very smart. Also my entire time of playing i have yet to see that many botters in my server. Mind you some servers may have more but i am working on getting 2 lvl80 characters and have yet to run into 10 bots in Fort Aspenwood server (already have 1 lvl80). I also found that in crafting some items are worth more then others by a lot to the point they create a profit. Such as a pair of heavy armour pants sould for 14G when it cost me nothing to make (found all materials myself) even if i did buy the materials i still would make a profit of 12G per pants. There is still crafting items that are worth a ton of money. There is also items that i found that sold for 54G and are only lvl40 items and they sold in seconds after i posted it. Common items have lost their value just due to supply and demand. So far i have yet to see Botters effect the economy at all the ones that kitten me off are the stupid people who price items at vendor cost 1 while the fee is greater then it. There is many common items with this fault which just makes me vendor those items. That is not bots fault but all 100000 people i seen do it on those items. Supply and Demand. If you can fill the supply when there is a demand you make large profit. Another issue is Gold Sellers but they are being handled from what i seen.

Suddenflame.2601:

Reading this entire thread i am coming to the conclusion that Botters are not significant of a problem as of yet. There is many mechanics in place that destroy the efficient aspects of botting code unless they are very smart. Also my entire time of playing i have yet to see that many botters in my server. Mind you some servers may have more but i am working on getting 2 lvl80 characters and have yet to run into 10 bots in Fort Aspenwood server (already have 1 lvl80). I also found that in crafting some items are worth more then others by a lot to the point they create a profit. Such as a pair of heavy armour pants sould for 14G when it cost me nothing to make (found all materials myself) even if i did buy the materials i still would make a profit of 12G per pants. There is still crafting items that are worth a ton of money. There is also items that i found that sold for 54G and are only lvl40 items and they sold in seconds after i posted it. Common items have lost their value just due to supply and demand. So far i have yet to see Botters effect the economy at all the ones that kitten me off are the stupid people who price items at vendor cost 1 while the fee is greater then it. There is many common items with this fault which just makes me vendor those items. That is not bots fault but all 100000 people i seen do it on those items. Supply and Demand. If you can fill the supply when there is a demand you make large profit. Another issue is Gold Sellers but they are being handled from what i seen.

I believe you are talking about dead items, which are priced so high and are so useless (i think there is a level 0 staff for some gold, somewhere, lemon was also 15g yesterday (accountbound)) that nobody even bothers to put it on the tp and the people who did, probably forgot that they were actually paying fees and are now hoping for a not-so intelligent person to actually buy that item. which will never happen.

just because there is a price on something on the TP doesn’t mean that somebody is willing to pay for it.

So if you substitute “is selling for x” with “is trying to sell for x” you will see that crafting makes only a very small profit and only on certain items.

of course, if you gather the mats, craft a lvl 80 heavy armor pants and sell it (for max 2.3-2.5g) you make all the profit

I think it’s a pretty normal economy for an MMO, which is completely bonkers but expected. If you wanted a real healthy economy, you would have to go full-on EVE style with no NPC vendors, destroyable “gear” that constantly needs to be replaced, and continued demand for “low-level” gear even at endgame (because all the ships from the smallest to the largest are used in different circumstances).

Nope. In EvE you still get bads who just can’t grasp how a market works and they also create similar posts to those I see on this forum.

It’s obvious and intended and happens in real life all the time for people to sell below cost.
All it takes is to be clueless (this covers an huge amount of people) or to have produced during a price swing that made the components cost less than today.

Just look at those who believe crafted stuff should earn anything. Nope.
“Earn” means you did something that “earned” you that something.

What did you “earn” by pressing 1 button to craft the same level up widget another million of people did? Zero. As It Should Be.

The profit in crafting is not the coin but the XP you get by merging components to level up. Once you are at 400, the profit is on the few-ish goods that have demand.
So hone up your market research skill or get a fat zero income.

That’s also how EvE works, with the difference in EvE you don’t even get XP for crafting.
Most stuff in EvE sells below build cost because:

- People value their time ZERO (their fault, not the market) in the game like they do in RL “because it’s an hobby”, “because it’s a game”… Therefore the minerals they dig themselves “are free” so they will sell whatever for below production cost.
In GW2 add to the above all those who consider the TP their portable NPC vendor. They pay the “service” for being able to dump their stuff from everywhere by selling below cost.

- Traders buy stuff at whatever value and compete. The guys who dumped stuff under cost is bought up. Then comes a price down swing and the trader is too impatient (or dumb) and sells for even lower.

In the end markets are created to optimize price bid vs ask spreads, this is what they do, this is what GW2 markets do.

Therefore those complaining that GW2 markets don’t work because they are doing what they were built to do, did not get the very concept about what a market is for.

Vaerah.4907:

I think it’s a pretty normal economy for an MMO, which is completely bonkers but expected. If you wanted a real healthy economy, you would have to go full-on EVE style with no NPC vendors, destroyable “gear” that constantly needs to be replaced, and continued demand for “low-level” gear even at endgame (because all the ships from the smallest to the largest are used in different circumstances).

Nope. In EvE you still get bads who just can’t grasp how a market works and they also create similar posts to those I see on this forum.

It’s obvious and intended and happens in real life all the time for people to sell below cost.
All it takes is to be clueless (this covers an huge amount of people) or to have produced during a price swing that made the components cost less than today.

Just look at those who believe crafted stuff should earn anything. Nope.
“Earn” means you did something that “earned” you that something.

What did you “earn” by pressing 1 button to craft the same level up widget another million of people did? Zero. As It Should Be.

The profit in crafting is not the coin but the XP you get by merging components to level up. Once you are at 400, the profit is on the few-ish goods that have demand.
So hone up your market research skill or get a fat zero income.

That’s also how EvE works, with the difference in EvE you don’t even get XP for crafting.
Most stuff in EvE sells below build cost because:

- People value their time ZERO (their fault, not the market) in the game like they do in RL “because it’s an hobby”, “because it’s a game”… Therefore the minerals they dig themselves “are free” so they will sell whatever for below production cost.
In GW2 add to the above all those who consider the TP their portable NPC vendor. They pay the “service” for being able to dump their stuff from everywhere by selling below cost.

- Traders buy stuff at whatever value and compete. The guys who dumped stuff under cost is bought up. Then comes a price down swing and the trader is too impatient (or dumb) and sells for even lower.

In the end markets are created to optimize price bid vs ask spreads, this is what they do, this is what GW2 markets do.

Therefore those complaining that GW2 markets don’t work because they are doing what they were built to do, did not get the very concept about what a market is for.

Difference is EVE or what used to be the difference is there were varying scales of people with faction/rep with a number of zones. So if a guy took the time to grind out all the rep and all the knowledges he could sell and buy anywhere for zero fees. HUGE advantage. You could buy off people and refine stuff and still make mega profits, especially if you took it to a ‘danger’ zone.

The TP in GW is universal and static. Eve has about 30 markets and they all vary. GW2 isnt even close to EvE’s level, or what EvE used to be when I was playing (it may have changed now). If you didnt like the price for your item where you were you could make a few jumps and sell it for more, you werent stuck selling it for a loss.

Rodarin.6058:

Difference is EVE or what used to be the difference is there were varying scales of people with faction/rep with a number of zones. So if a guy took the time to grind out all the rep and all the knowledges he could sell and buy anywhere for zero fees. HUGE advantage. You could buy off people and refine stuff and still make mega profits, especially if you took it to a ‘danger’ zone.

Profitability through fees is for bads. I have double digits billions in my wallet without a single character being expecially trained for trading or with high Jita standings.
That level of optimization is only needed if you flip stuff like PLEX / freighters and similar big value per item stock.

Doing some math (including in GW2) and i.e. purchasing stuff at below reprocess value and reselling the minerals works even better.

Being able to trade and predict the next 2-3 days trend (easy enough, just count the amount of buy vs sell orders and their timestamp) removes the need for tight optimization. The same applies to GW2, there are items costing 1.16g during USA time and 93s during EU time and this just covers 1 day.

The fact the TP is universal is a boon to liquidity. Most EvE markets are illiquid and easily manipulated by one player. This is the opposite of a good market (they are born to optimize price and minimize spreads, manipulation does the opposite).
Most EvE markets, even very liquid ones, see the price move every 2-3 minutes. This is not how a real market works.
Big GW2 markets prices move smoothly and constantly like in RL instead, someone accustomed trading futures will immediately feel at home trading in GW2.

On the contrary EvE “multiple markets” approach has been long time defiled by cache updaters that upload every market prices onto big 3rd party websites (EvE Central, EvE Market Data, EvE Marketeer just to name 3 of several). This is also realistic, no decent worldwide commodities market has local quotes.

Rodarin.6058:

If you didnt like the price for your item where you were you could make a few jumps and sell it for more, you werent stuck selling it for a loss.

These days feel free to carry your overpriced 100,000 widgets 10 jumps away and sell 30 a day.

Cisza.9540:

Imo – majority of ppl crying about “bots completely destroying economy” have no idea how to make money on AH and/or no clue how fifo market works.
Bots do affect AH, but not as much as you imagine and not always in “bad ways”.

Bots dont always affect the game negatively?

Are you Nuts? Bots are the bane of all legitimate and serious gamers.
They don’t PLAY the game at all, they CHEAT. If you think CHEATing is “ok” then there is something wrong here.

The entire economy would be fine if arena net could eliminate bots. However that’s a hard thing to accomplish. Still, the effort needs to be there because personally, if they let this problem lax, it IS going to completely ruin the economy. And that’s a major part of an mmo to have completely borked.

You guys yelling about bots are funny. Of course they have a negative impact on the economy, no one is debating that. What you fail to grasp is that you have no provable evidence to back up your claims that its destroying/destroyed the GW2 economy already.

To all those saying one side has logic and one doesn’t, I would like to say that if you are the one with a positive hypothesis (Bots have destroyed the economy) then the burden of PROOF (not speculation) is on YOU. People don’t have to prove that they are NOT destroying the economy, they only need to refute your evidence (or lack therof).

Also bots are almost always good for the average gamer, they make everything except the HIGHEST most EXCLUSIVE items cheaper for everyone. If they didnt do something positive that people liked then they wouldnt exist.

The problem is that bots are against the TOS of the game, they go against the games stated rules, yet they still exist.

Ya…they do do something “positive” some people like. That thing is provide an instant form of increased power in game AGAINST the rules for people who will do whatever it takes to “be the best” without having any moral compass and at the cost of their own reputation.

Buying Gems and converting to gold is one thing. Bots is completely different. If you actually knew the kind of life that promotes for some of the people who run bots, you wouldn’t do it unless your evil. There are several documentaries that show that many people in China are basically used as indentured servants and given just a place to live and enough to eat and get by on for botting and gold farming. Its despicable, and personally I refuse to associate with anyone who does it.

That’s all very interesting, but no one is saying bots are good in general, or that we support what they do for society, or that they are having an overall helpful effect on the economy. We’re just not accepting, on basically zero evidence, some people’s claims that bots are having a significant enough negative effect on the economy to have “ruined” it in any sense of the word.

Yes, of course bots are against the TOS, they violate the spirit of the game, they make some events way less fun for legitimate players, they are part of a (real-money) economy that can be pretty hard on its workers, they often run on stolen or hacked accounts, and all sorts of other terrible things.

But exactly none of this actually means that they are a significant force behind any of the recent price changes on the TP, which is what people in this thread are primarily complaining about.

(Also, if you’re worried about sweatshops and indentured servitude, do you really think your clothes and food and computer and other physical goods were all produced by fine upstanding companies employing well-paid and fairly treated workers? Of all the good reasons not to support gold farmers, the mistreatment of the people doing the farming rings the most hollow, coming from basically anyone in a first-world country who had the money to buy this game and a computer to play it on in the first place.)

displacedTitan.6897:

You guys yelling about bots are funny. Of course they have a negative impact on the economy, no one is debating that. What you fail to grasp is that you have no provable evidence to back up your claims that its destroying/destroyed the GW2 economy already.

To all those saying one side has logic and one doesn’t, I would like to say that if you are the one with a positive hypothesis (Bots have destroyed the economy) then the burden of PROOF (not speculation) is on YOU. People don’t have to prove that they are NOT destroying the economy, they only need to refute your evidence (or lack therof).

Also bots are almost always good for the average gamer, they make everything except the HIGHEST most EXCLUSIVE items cheaper for everyone. If they didnt do something positive that people liked then they wouldnt exist.

Hard to prove the absence of something. We only know what exists, and what exists isnt that good.

As far as bots and them providing a service, yeah I have said it a million times, they provide third party gold for people to buy to bypass the system they ruined.

As far as them making things cheaper, they dont really. Things in this game would be cheap anyway because everyone can get them on their own. they just make them so cheap no one can sell them or harvest enough of them alone (on their own) to sell them for an amount ‘worth’ taking the time to do.

The only things people actively seek out are Orichalcum and Orrian wood. Because they were still semi profitable in terms of selling them on the TP. I personally stopped going down there when they dipped below 3S per ore. But I am sure some people still do it, especially now theyre on a 24 hour timer.

In the end money isnt the end all be all in this game anyway, it just seems like it is right now because it is sort of new and people might want to buy the short cut to something. But most people bought gems with in game gold early on andgot all their character slots opened and their bank slots opened. Only think lack of gold does now is slow down peopel who might want to buy guild influence. But that is also a short cut as even a solo player who logs in 5 toons a day will get enough influence in a years time to max out all the upgrades. Assuming they all level to 80 and use the influence boosters.

Hippocampus.8470:

(Also, if you’re worried about sweatshops and indentured servitude, do you really think your clothes and food and computer and other physical goods were all produced by fine upstanding companies employing well-paid and fairly treated workers? Of all the good reasons not to support gold farmers, the mistreatment of the people doing the farming rings the most hollow, coming from basically anyone in a first-world country who had the money to buy this game and a computer to play it on in the first place.)

I know what you mean, and ya it is hard not to buy certain products from those places, but whenever possible I do try to by American made. Buying American made products helps reduce our national deficit, and helps out our neighbors. I strongly suggest you buy American whenever you can if the product isnt inferior.

I have read this thread, and while I see many saying " How much botts are affecting the market is questionable. " and " A player can get more gold from third parties, than from the purchse of gems." All tend to forget that such traddees break ToS. This is the same mentality people use when buying a rolex for 30% market price. It is either fake, or fell off some truck.

Either way, as far as i am concerned it is not about whether the effects of bots on the market, both the trade post market’s prices tanking, and the gem prices crashing or not, is substantial, or minor. it is that the mere existence of bots in the game violates ToS. Even if the price of one item drops from 500g, to 499g99s99c, because of bot activity, it is TOO much of an influence, as far as I am concerned.

Anyone that tries to say " There is zero proof that bots are affecting the economy negatively" just make me question if maybe they themselves DEFEND bots because they themselves USE bots.

Kind of Like the guy that argues " Counterfeit Rolexes are so few, they do not affect the real Rolex market" may not be selling fake rolexes, but he may be wearing one.

Lastly: The real source of the problem needs to be addressed with week long suspensions at the least, and maybe perma-banning for multiple offences.

I speak of players that buy gold from third parties not sanctioned by ArenaNet. As far as I am concerned, these players are the reason the bots are there. There players are the reason the third party gold sellers sell gold. The easiest way to deal with both bots, and with gold sellers is to scare the players buying their ultimate product.

The Gold sellers do not fear banning because all they need to do is just spend $60 on another box. But… if you suspend an account for a week, and warn a Player, that player is a lot less likely to trade in in-game gold again. And maybe they cry " My account got hacked." What do they say the second time, and the third?

Eventually ban the players using bots, or trading in in game gold from 3rd parties. These are players that won’t be missed.

Actually, here is a system in which bots can make a huge impact on the game. Bots amass gold quickly and easily. Now even the exotic market is difficult to control… but where the control can happen quickly and easily is the Precursor weapons area. Buying up the limited amount of precursors and jacking up prices will then create demand for buying gold. Bots can be highly destructive by creating false pricing and market sways that create a demand for their services.

Nerelith.7360:

Anyone that tries to say " There is zero proof that bots are affecting the economy negatively" just make me question if maybe they themselves DEFEND bots because they themselves USE bots.

Kind of Like the guy that argues " Counterfeit Rolexes are so few, they do not affect the real Rolex market" may not be selling fake rolexes, but he may be wearing one.

This is completely ridiculous.

I’m a guy who would argue that counterfeit Rolexes do not significantly affect the real Rolex market, and I’ve never bought a nice wristwatch in my life. The reason I’d argue that has nothing to do with being defensive of my own actions, and everything to do with valuing logic and critical thinking. For example, my logic and critical thinking tells me that the vast majority of people who buy a “Rolex” for a few hundred bucks are not the same people who would ever pay full price even if the counterfeits didn’t exist.

Are you seriously going to try to silence anyone who disagrees with you about the impact of botting by accusing every one of them of running bots themselves? Are you seriously going to ignore the simple possibility that, thus far, we still haven’t seen any well-reasoned justification for the belief that bots are “ruining” the economy?

I mean, sure, it’s probably easier for you to engage in this sort of character assassination than it is for you to engage in some actual thinking, but it’s also a lot more kitteny of you.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Actually, here is a system in which bots can make a huge impact on the game. Bots amass gold quickly and easily. Now even the exotic market is difficult to control… but where the control can happen quickly and easily is the Precursor weapons area. Buying up the limited amount of precursors and jacking up prices will then create demand for buying gold. Bots can be highly destructive by creating false pricing and market sways that create a demand for their services.

Yes, that is a way they could affect the market. However, as things currently sit a lot of precursors are still quite a bit too cheap given what goes into them. If it takes an average of a thousand rare weapons to get a precursor (which is a figure I’ve seen some people throw about, having thrown that many in and still seen nothing), we should expect the precursor to cost about a thousand times more than an average level 80 rare. Which means around 200-400g.

Rodarin.6058:

Now that the gold sellers and botters are in full swing that is why gem prices and that exchanges has completely crashed, and will continue to get worse. NO ONE is buying gems, especially to trade for gold. Not when you can get gold from a third party for pennies on the dollar.

Buying gems with in-game gold is a good inflationary hedge.

As Rodarin pointed out, gold farmers are selling their product under ArenaNET’s exchange rates, which I pointed out to them when it (gems to gold) was first announced.

To think that they pitched it as a way to combat gold farming is the most hilarious part of the issue.

Oh, that and Mike O’s quote about never making a game where people could pay to win. That was a serious guy buster.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Rodarin.6058:

Now that the gold sellers and botters are in full swing that is why gem prices and that exchanges has completely crashed, and will continue to get worse. NO ONE is buying gems, especially to trade for gold. Not when you can get gold from a third party for pennies on the dollar.

Buying gems with in-game gold is a good inflationary hedge.

Not if youre spending real life cash through Anet.

Everybody wants a bargain. We debate semantics all we want, which is what every economy thread erodes into.

Bottomline is in game gold is worth less in this game than it was GW1. even though it can be traded for an item that represents real life cash.

Everyone in GW was loaded with plat early on, then they started trading in ecto, then when ecto became useless they started trading in rubies and sapphires, then it became keys and torment trade ins.

So having in game gold be worthless or next to it isnt anything new. But with a different crafting system, a trading post, and all the talk about an economy one would expect it to hold value for more than 6 weeks.

The point I was getting at is… That it matters little to not at all to me, whether bots affect the market, marginally, or not at all. It is against the rules. As far as i am concerned, that is that. Anyone that wants or tries to get into the whole " dfoes it really affect the economy as much as others say" Is really missing the point. They also provide cover to those that encourage the breaking of said rules.

I do not care that people cannot afford to, or do not wish to pay the rate on the sanctioned market for in game gold. If someone is caught buying gold from a third party seller, and is caught, slap them with a week’s suspension, and a warning. If they get caught a second time, and therefore establish a pattern of violations… perma-ban them.

Any discussion about " the real affects of botting in MMO economies" totally disregards that what is being discussed is a violation of the rules we agreed to follow when we signed on to the game.

If you find that it is cheaper to break the rules, then do so… but if you get caught , and have to face consequences, i for one will not shed a tear. I have been playing MMO’s since Eq1. Never did I feel the need to buy gold from third parties. Anyone that does, and gets caught deserves what they get.

Rodarin.6058:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Buying gems with in-game gold is a good inflationary hedge.

Not if youre spending real life cash through Anet.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what “buying gems with in-game gold” means…

So having in game gold be worthless or next to it isnt anything new. But with a different crafting system, a trading post, and all the talk about an economy one would expect it to hold value for more than 6 weeks.

It still does have value. Just not as much as it started with, because there’s more gold in the game now. And if the amount of gold in the game didn’t increase over time, something would be seriously wrong. Would anyone even continue playing if they didn’t see their wealth gradually increasing?

Nerelith.7360:

Any discussion about " the real affects of botting in MMO economies" totally disregards that what is being discussed is a violation of the rules we agreed to follow when we signed on to the game.

Um… I don’t know if you’re reading the same thread I am, but the link at the top of the page I’m typing this in says the current forum is “Black Lion Trading Co” and the current thread is “Economy? What Economy?” I took this to mean that what is being discussed is the economy of the BLTC, perhaps including the real effects of botting in this particular economy.

Maybe that was just me, though? Please let me know if I’m in the wrong thread.

(Seriously, though, it’s like you came into a discussion on the economic impacts of counterfeiting and then loudly refused to discuss the economic impacts of counterfeiting because that’s beside “the point”, which is that counterfeiting is against the rules.)

My friend posted this on our guild forums.

I was curious after getting 80 last night why that zone was so lush with obvious bots. I have come to find out that this is partly why there are so many farmers in Guild Wars 2: Gems

ArenaNet Price: 4,000 gems for $50.00 USD
Farmer Price: 84 Gold for $47.39 USD

Current conversion is 1 Gold for 181 Gems (this is going to keep going up and up and up because nobody turns gems into gold as its worthless)

Farmer: 4,000/181 = 22.1 Gold per 4,000 gems

Therefore, ArenaNet essentially sells you 22.1 Gold for $50.00.

This breaks down to:

Farmer: 0.56¢ per 1g
ArenaNet: $2.26 per 1g

:saywut:

The prices won’t equalize until the gold for gem trading equalizes with ArenaNet’s selling price which is way higher than farmers. Prices will only equalize when gem conversion increases by around 75%, meaning…

82.25 silver for 100 gems.

So a Black Lion Key would cost 1.2 Gold.

Sounds like they hired their economist from Wall St. :rotfl: I’m curious to see how they deal with this, because it really leaves the players that don’t want to spend money on the short end of the stick as it pertains to the gem store. (which isn’t a necesary part of GW2, but they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot)

Melk.6958:

The prices won’t equalize until the gold for gem trading equalizes with ArenaNet’s selling price which is way higher than farmers. Prices will only equalize when gem conversion increases by around 75%, meaning…

82.25 silver for 100 gems.

The conversion rate of gems to gold is influenced by player trading, not set by ArenaNet. As the in-game gold supply increases, converting gems will give more gold (assuming there isn’t a matching increase in the supply of gems). This is already happening.

Having said that, even in ArenaNet “intervened” and set a new rate that is competitive to the gold sellers, they would just turn around and cut the price again.

ArenaNet doesn’t have to match the prices of gold sellers, because they also have several other advantages. By your argument, there is no way anyone would ever buy music, movies, or video games, because they pay a price premium of infinity percent. Yet this is clearly wrong, because people do, in fact, buy those things in the real world.

The advantages of buying from ArenaNet include:
1) Supporting ArenaNet.
Buying money from ArenaNet supports ArenaNet. Buying money from gold sellers does not. Even if you, personally don’t care about this, many other players do.
2) Security.
You take a lot of risks buying gold from a gold seller. There is a high risk of being scammed, having your account stolen, or of credit card fraud. This is not the case when you buy from ArenaNet.
3) Legality (meeting the Terms of Service).
Considering that by buying from a gold seller you’re breaking the Terms of Sevice, you take the risk of getting banned, or perhaps even sued by ArenaNet (though this is unlikely in the extreme), if you do it.

So ArenaNet does not, in fact, have to match gold sellers’ prices in order to sell gems. In fact, there’s reason to believe that gems are already being bought with real money at a reasonable rate, and in fact that rate is likely to increase further as gems increase in price vs. gold.

wow you are pretty delusional lackofcheese. Should rename to lackofcommonsense.

Do you really think that people who buy and sell gold are concerned about 1. Supporting ANet, 2. Security, 3. ToS. ? Do you honestly believe that? Are you really new to MMO market?

Whatever ArenaNet does, they will NEVER stop gold sellers, nobody can. They can make it really hard for them (banning being one of the best tools), but that wont stop them. However, what ANet can do is minimize the impact that buying of gold and goods can have on the game. How they do that is up to them entirely.

I’m not saying that everyone cares enough about those things to buy gems from ArenaNet. The point is that some people do, just as there are some people who buy music instead of pirating it.

Yes, there are plenty of people who buy from gold sellers, and some of them only care about the price. Those people are a lost cause to ArenaNet anyway, because gold sellers will always sell gold for lower than ArenaNet does, no matter what. ArenaNet would have to destroy the economy entirely in order to “beat” the gold sellers at that game.

Some players do care about those things, are willing to pay their money to ArenaNet for gems, and in fact there is every indication that a good number of players are already doing this. ArenaNet is perfectly happy to keep making money from those players.

Of course the price of gold from 3rd party sites has to be lower than the gem exchange rate – people wouldn’t bother buying it otherwise, given the risks. However, gold sellers have costs too, and the price they sell gold at reflects those costs.

The price of gems in gold, on the other hand, is largely determined by the demand for items from the gem store. I’m presently playing around with a toy model that provides information on optimal price levels in the online store by looking at the gem exchange rate and 3rd party sale prices – it is implied, but not proven, that your optimal price level for goods in the online store is essentially the 3rd party price plus the risk premium.

The effect of bots on the economy is not at all obvious from first principles – it can be beneficial or detrimental, depending on the state of the economy and how the bot functions. I can think of several positive functions of bots at the moment, but the overall benefit or detriment depends on where you’re sitting.

So why don’t all you smug elitists who are making hundreds of gold by “playing” the TP explain your methods to the rest of us instead of insulting and name calling?

TurboGuard.4865:

So why don’t all you smug elitists who are making hundreds of gold by “playing” the TP explain your methods to the rest of us instead of insulting and name calling?

Because most of them got their seed money form exploits and cheating and now can sit back with the holier than thou attitudes because they got one over on ANET who let them all back in with the promise they would delete their ill gotten gains, which none of them did.

Like I said it doesnt matter now anyway, economy is trash, best way to make money is simply to grind alts and do map complete and run around with max MF and vendor 95% of the stuff you get.

New people that want gems will just buy gold from third party and trade it for whatever they can get. I imagine within a month it will be 50 gems per gold. But the further it drops that way the closer Anet gets to gold seller prices, but even at 50 Gems per gold they will still be half what gold sellers are right now.

Its likely gold sellers are spamming the market with their grinded items and mainly storing the gold to keep gold relatively scarce so they get more irl currency from selling it.

If I were to make an assumption, then “bots” possibly contribute to 1% (if even that) of the economy’s issues.

Like I said it doesnt matter now anyway, economy is trash, best way to make money is simply to grind

Yes, and many, I assume, think the same. It’s due to the massive amount of legitimate players that the economy is “trash” — more people are selling, and less and less are buying.

Supply/demand in an economy where gold is (for most) a problem to obtain (or maintain) will result in an overabundance of supply, and a dwindling demand (as per usual). Throw in the lovely human qualities of greed and impatience, and you have a nicely undercut TP (and upset players).

Rodarin.6058:

Because most of them got their seed money form exploits and cheating and now can sit back with the holier than thou attitudes because they got one over on ANET who let them all back in with the promise they would delete their ill gotten gains, which none of them did.

This is such utter crap. If you don’t want the people making money on the TP to think the rest of you are whiny morons, you should probably cut out this sour grapes nonsense where you accuse them all of being exploiters or botters or gold farmers or whatever.

And yeah, as someone responded to the same challenge in another thread: buy low, sell high. It’s up to you to figure out which items allow for that at which times, but just note that it’s almost never the highly-traded stuff that shows up on the first page of the TP.

What you probably won’t like to hear is that it actually takes a significant amount of work to do well, more or less on par with playing the game in a more “traditional” way by fighting mobs and running dungeons and suchforth.

TurboGuard.4865:

So why don’t all you smug elitists who are making hundreds of gold by “playing” the TP explain your methods to the rest of us instead of insulting and name calling?

I wrote up a huge post in reply and actually exceeded the character limit here.

Are you satisfied?

Doman.3042:

TurboGuard.4865:

So why don’t all you smug elitists who are making hundreds of gold by “playing” the TP explain your methods to the rest of us instead of insulting and name calling?

I wrote up a huge post in reply and actually exceeded the character limit here.

Are you satisfied?

Actually, yes. That is a very good explanation and I do appreciate that you took the time to write it up instead of the usual “lol ur just bad” type of replies.

Slight addendum:

Seriously, it doesn’t take much active time to do this. Sit down for half an hour at most. It takes a lot of time for the effects to take place, though! So do your trading post thing for a small bit, then go out and actually do something. Play the game. Get map completion. Be with your family. Get some sleep. Think of it like a garden – it doesn’t take you long to water it, but it takes a lot of time to grow. You’re playing the patient game by not being the impulsive player.

Diversify what you relist. Don’t rely on just one item forever – markets dry up that way. Don’t always go for big ticket items – sometimes there’s money to be had by making 1c profits in bulk. Sometimes there’s just as much to be had by relisting a rare or exotic!

Hippocampus.8470:

Rodarin.6058:

Because most of them got their seed money form exploits and cheating and now can sit back with the holier than thou attitudes because they got one over on ANET who let them all back in with the promise they would delete their ill gotten gains, which none of them did.

This is such utter crap. If you don’t want the people making money on the TP to think the rest of you are whiny morons, you should probably cut out this sour grapes nonsense where you accuse them all of being exploiters or botters or gold farmers or whatever.

And yeah, as someone responded to the same challenge in another thread: buy low, sell high. It’s up to you to figure out which items allow for that at which times, but just note that it’s almost never the highly-traded stuff that shows up on the first page of the TP.

What you probably won’t like to hear is that it actually takes a significant amount of work to do well, more or less on par with playing the game in a more “traditional” way by fighting mobs and running dungeons and suchforth.

What he says.

Also, in pseudo-realistic economy games it’s the same of RL finance markets: 85% of the participants consistently lose, about 10% stay afloat and 5% become very rich.

For few to become rich, most must become poorer, it’s quite simple.

Those who become poorer, the losers, invent all sorts of accusations, excuses or just switch to something where they “can’t lose” like manual grinding and dumping. They likely don’t know that the only, single most important currency in the universe is time, not money. They are giving away lots and lots of their time to get breadcrumbs in exchange.
So, even “grinders” are losers in a trading point of view.

Vaerah.4907:

Hippocampus.8470:

Rodarin.6058:

Because most of them got their seed money form exploits and cheating and now can sit back with the holier than thou attitudes because they got one over on ANET who let them all back in with the promise they would delete their ill gotten gains, which none of them did.

This is such utter crap. If you don’t want the people making money on the TP to think the rest of you are whiny morons, you should probably cut out this sour grapes nonsense where you accuse them all of being exploiters or botters or gold farmers or whatever.

And yeah, as someone responded to the same challenge in another thread: buy low, sell high. It’s up to you to figure out which items allow for that at which times, but just note that it’s almost never the highly-traded stuff that shows up on the first page of the TP.

What you probably won’t like to hear is that it actually takes a significant amount of work to do well, more or less on par with playing the game in a more “traditional” way by fighting mobs and running dungeons and suchforth.

What he says.

Also, in pseudo-realistic economy games it’s the same of RL finance markets: 85% of the participants consistently lose, about 10% stay afloat and 5% become very rich.

For few to become rich, most must become poorer, it’s quite simple.

Those who become poorer, the losers, invent all sorts of accusations, excuses or just switch to something where they “can’t lose” like manual grinding and dumping. They likely don’t know that the only, single most important currency in the universe is time, not money. They are giving away lots and lots of their time to get breadcrumbs in exchange.
So, even “grinders” are losers in a trading point of view.

LOL, I have about 500G ATM, so I wouldnt say I am hurting, I just put it in perspective.

There is no way anyone, let alone the multitude of guys claiming here are doing so well on the TP buying in bulk then selling in bulk, its impossible. There just arent that many markets. if there were one, then sure a single guy could do it. But if one opens up there is always someone there to grab it and usually close it before even they themselves take a major profit out of it.

I got my gold from 3 items, all totally lucky and more than likely not to be repeated. So basically I won the lottery ….three times. That isnt much of an economy if you ask me. I was also lucky that there were three people with enough gold to buy them. More than likely a gold seller made some nice cash on that exchange.

You guys can drop all the innuendos and stuff you want to. Guys with more than a little bit of gold either got lucky, bought it, or exploited it. No one is starting with 4 or 5 gold and grinding it up to 100 or more.

Actually, yes, plenty of people are doing that. They’re just doing it slowly and meticulously.

I thought the market wouldn’t be able to support that many people either, but it apparently can. I’ve only been trading about a week and building up my investments – currently around 42g, growing about 10g a day and rising quickly.

I believe timezones partially factor into it; players in one timezone can’t fill enough buy orders to significantly dent supply during their off-hours. Once they go to bed, their buy orders are either out-bid, or run to completion in short order. At which point the market frees up for a new set of players to start bidding, buying and selling, so each market actually can support 4 or 5 successful players, and that’s assuming the player places enough buy orders to secure all produce through his period, if his orders routinely run to completion then there are windows within those hours for other players to get supplies, increasing it to a dozen or more players per market.

That’s my theory anyway * shrug * – all i know is that I place my orders, work my mojo, flip deals, turn profits and walk away richer for it – enough so that I now only play the game component for fun, playing with my friends or for karma, because the markets earn far more gold for me than I can as a mesmer :p

Haven’t read anything beyond the OP, but just wanted to drop in and say that it is manifestly untrue. I make all kinds of money just playing the market. D00d, ur doing it wrong.

To those who say that the bots do not have significant impact on the economy, here is my two cents:

You know those people who spam the chat in Lion’s Arch with that url of some third-party site that sells gold (example: gw2walmart.com)? I would encourage you to actually take a look at that site and open your eyes. Notice how you can get 10 gold for about 5 USD? If you were to purchase Gems through Anet, you would pay 20 USD for 1600 gems which could then be exchanged for roughly 6 gold (depending on the day of the week). Do the math and you’ll find that you’d be paying twice as much money for about half as much gold – a difference by a factor of 1/4. You see? They’re not just undercutting prices of crafting mats and exotics – they’re undercutting the entire system! Anet has much bigger problem than they realize. The bots and the spammers ARE THE SAME PEOPLE. They are running massive business across all servers. They have to bot in order to get quantities of gold fast enough to all fulfill the orders. And that’s why you see large groups of them running around. In fact, just yesterday, in a forest in the Harathi Hinterlands, I thought there was a dynamic event going on because I saw a what appeared to be a small army of brown bears rushing right past me (Yeah, I’m running this thing on intel’s integrated graphics so it takes longer for things to render – give me a break). But as I got closer, I noticed it was just a bunch of rangers running around in the exact same path attacking just about every mob in sight. Some of them were even naked. Yes, they were bots. And they’re just about everywhere. This business that they are running is so pervasive and destructive to the game’s economy, that a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge that it’s even happening. So this rant will probably be dismissed as nothing more than a “conspiracy theory” or the ravings of a mad player.

TLDR: Bots have business stretches across all servers and involves making real-life currency, and that’s why they don’t care about destroying the in-game economy. That’s why there are so many of them. And they are undermining the integrity of players that make legit gold by the traditional (but excruciatingly slow) grind.

EDIT: To answer the OP’s question of “What economy?”: It no longer exists as it once did or could have been. Rodarin made an excellent point. There aren’t too many markets on the TP that haven’t already been bought out.

GreyInsomniak.1328:

To those who say that the bots do not have significant impact on the economy, here is my two cents

Your two cents only provide plausibility for that claim. They aren’t actually evidence for it.

Yes, bots exist, and they farm and buy and sell things. That is not the same as having a significant impact on the economy. That would require evidence for the volume that they trade, both of in-game goods on the TP and of RMT gold on their websites. Spam doesn’t give any indication of how many people buy it, any more than getting emails from some alleged deposed Nigerian leader, who wants to give me $22,000,000 (twenty-two million US dollars) in exchange for my bank information, actually means a significant number of people fall for that sort of spam.

(And incidentally, gold spamming in LA seems far less common now than it was when I first started noticing it.)

@Hippocampus – While there may be some spam that just steals your banking information, this particular site that I used as example does not. You’ll notice that all payments are process through PayPal, which securely encrypts such information – effectively hiding it from even the merchant you’re buying from. So you’re kind of missing the point. Unless these people are like MIT graduates that have managed to crack that system of encryption, the people buying into the spam aren’t really “falling” for anything. However, you are correct on one point: I have no concrete way of proving that the volume of people buying into this market is “substantial enough to have a significant impact on the economy.” But you can’t disprove it either because we, as players, don’t have access to those financial records. It doesn’t mean that this isn’t happening.

EDIT: Just so we’re all clear – I’m not denying that there is a risk factor involved when buying from third-party sites. And I’m not defending what these types of sites are doing.

No, you missed the point. I didn’t mean to imply that all gold selling is a scam, merely that spamming people about it doesn’t indicate how many people take them up on their offers.

Yes, clearly it works sometimes, else there wouldn’t be such spam. But one part of the explanation for the decreasing price of black market gold is that not enough people were willing to buy it at the old price, even though that was also clearly much lower than ANet’s price.

@Hippocampus – I am NOT saying that bots are the ONLY reason for the decreasing price of black market gold. You’re right – it’s still a living breathing economy, meaning there could be hundreds of factors involved in the decreasing price of black market gold. What I AM saying is that bots are ONE of those many factors, and YES – I’m going to go ahead and make the claim that it is a SIGNIFICANT FACTOR that needs to be addressed.

@Hippocampus, give it up man. I dont think some of the people here know what significant means in the sense you are using it. To explain it you would need to drag lots of these people back through some basic statistics and critical thinking lessons.

@displaceTitan – /sigh. I took an AP Stats class in high school and as a Computer Science major at Virginia Tech, I am required to take a course called STAT 4705 Statistics for Engineers in order to graduate. So I’d like to think I know a thing or two about “basic statistics” and “critical thinking.” Am I saying that I actually performed a test of significance and that my resulting p-value was lower than the significance level alpha, and therefore my null hypothesis was rejected? No… frankly I’m not because I do not have access to the data that allows me to use the word “significant” in the sense that he is supposedly using it. And frankly, I don’t think he has access to it either. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. In fact, I’d love to take a look at it some time.

I guess, in the end, it’s all a moot point because we can’t really prove anything. It’s all conjecture.

EDIT: And with that, I think I have effectively killed this thread…. However, feel free to continue b*-ing about how the gold flow is moving slower than molasses. At least that much we can agree on >.>

GreyInsomniak.1328:

I’m not because I do not have access to the data that allows me to use the word “significant” in the sense that he is supposedly using it. And frankly, I don’t think he has access to it either. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. In fact, I’d love to take a look at it some time.

I guess, in the end, it’s all a moot point because we can’t really prove anything. It’s all conjecture.

When someone attempts to make a clear cut statement about causality they need to back up that statement with some sort of proof, or at the very least, a logical premise that others can follow along.

The onus is on the person (or people) making the claim to be able to back up the claim.

There is a baseline agreement that bots are having some sort of effect on the economy. The trouble is when people are claiming that bots are having a significant effect without being able to prove it in any sort of manner. The proofs offered earlier were not of botting activity but of human activity.

At the moment there is an economy in the game and it is rather robust. Players are making money from the economy in multiple ways. Bots are a part of this economy.

Yes, of course bots have an impact. This is true but are they -destroying- the economy?

If that claim is being made it needs to be backed up.

What bots are people talking about at this point?

Are they talking about farming bots? Or are they talking about Trading House bots?

In other words, it’s not for Hippo (or others asking for proofs) to disprove the claim, it is for the people making the claims that bots are negatively impacting the economy in a significant (noticeable) manner to back up their claims.