Guild Wars 2

I see people keep complaining that items sell bellow or at vendor prices. I think the reason for this is that gold is hard to get, and money is deflated to the point that an item’s real value is significantly BELOW the vendor sale price. Obviously the vendor sale price serves as an artificial bottom, or the prices would be way lower.

Again, the reason for this is not enough liquidity (not enough gold in the economy yet).

This should mean you should invest in materials or items now, then sit on them and hope for inflation to kick in. I am actually thinking of doing that with some higher-level materials. Thoughts?

It all depends on your trading strategy. What you say is valid. But another may see a lost in opportunity for investing in stock that sits in your bank for a long period doing nothing. If I can make more money and are willing to spend time to do frequent trade, then that’s not a good idea. If I’m not willing to spend time or are not making a lot doing frequent trade, then yes.

But think of it this way as well…some items are expansive now because everyone needs it for crafting…and when everyone is done with that in the future, even inflation might not bring the price higher.

The economy (and prices) were moving up over the first two weeks, but have definitely deflated over the last week. Exotic tailored good prices have gone from 30-40s over cost to 50-60s BELOW cost. Very strange, this has to be novel for a MMO.

everything is gonna drop in price going today forward, i suggest you sell off your goods now if you dont wanna watch them fall any further.

Deflation = When the total amount of currency/capita decreases. Only John will know the exact number, but I don’t think it’s happening as players are making money every single minute.

Price decrease/increase = what you see in wk1 and wk2. It can be a result of deflation, but that’s not the case here. As more players are participating in the market, the supply and demand of certain goods starts to change. These changes are reflected in the final transacting price in the market.

Gold is scarce = completion of an event gives you 15s rather than 15g

Result: you see smaller currency numbers in GW2 as compared to other game. Think of it as the Japanese Yen and USD.

Pragmatically, deflation occurs when the consumer price index decreases, which is exactly what is happening now. It’s not the amount of money in the economy, it’s the prices within the economy. Everything is slowly becoming a commodity (if it isn’t already).

CPI is being collected only at certain interval…and only on a basket of goods (food and common household item). If GW2 has food/water/electricity/cellphones, then yes.

Even then, it is constantly changing…which by your logic that at different hours of the day we’ll have multiple inflation and deflation? The value used specifically are being crunch out from statistical analysis to remove the “noise” of fluctuation. So observing 1 instance of price (or multiple and taking the average) and jump on to conclusion is inaccurate.

Money supply plays a significant role in determining the price of a goods among other factors.

John Smith.4610:

Lunesta.3742:

The economy (and prices) were moving up over the first two weeks, but have definitely deflated over the last week. Exotic tailored good prices have gone from 30-40s over cost to 50-60s BELOW cost. Very strange, this has to be novel for a MMO.

When something new is first released, there is a set of early adapters who discover and profit off the new items/markets. Because there is relatively few early adapters, prices are artificially high as supply is much lower than demand. As more players enter the market, the the price falls.

(I wish I could insert graphs)

This is a change in market saturation. It happens in every mmo because the new markets are introduced so frequently.

I would tend to agree, as I was one who capitalized in WoW by becoming a supplier (rather than a crafter) right out of the gates. And, because gold was scarce (and a lot of new MMO’ers joined), I was making a “killing” by release standards. This shifts over time as supply catches up with demand and more gold is in the system. WoW release people would beg for a gold to afford a tabard. Now people have 200,000g easily. Economics 101.

On the other hand, I think GW2 is a little bit more complex than that.

1. Everyone is a gatherer
2. The system is worldwide
3. The utility of crafting is mixed (lacks diversity and demand)

I think this is hindering the self-correcting nature of the game’s economy, and I don’t see it shifting anytime soon. Supply is high, demand is higher, but the demand is primarily for EXP purposes alone. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is one of the few (if only) worldwide trading systems. I challenge you to compare these to sever-wide AHs, which I would argue self-regulate better.

TLDR: crafting will generally not be profitable without changes/greater versatility. The system needs to be FAR more complex and multi-dimensional to work with such a MASSIVE economy.

Wazabi.1439:

If GW2 has food/water/electricity/cellphones, then yes.

What about the gold sinks? Those provide a base, and arguably somewhat predictable per-player deflationary pressure (by taking money out of the economy) – waypoints, repairs, tomes, tools, etc.

The problem of market saturation (perhaps due to the TP not being operational right away) should supposedly self-fix itself in time. But how long? Especially considering the gold sinks? Wouldn’t it make sense to disable those for a short period so the market stabilizes faster?

@Findecano.8124
I agree that crafting could use an overhaul to provide more utility and increase the complexity.

I disagree on server (smaller) market self regulates better. I think both will self regulate the same (it’s just a different environment but the same economic mechanism that regulates them), but it is the general benefit to the players that is different here. The biggest advantage of a large market is competition. That makes controlling AND profiting the market extremely difficult for any single person. Due to the volume of trade, price adjustments on supply and demand happens very quickly. That being said, I would like to hear your opinion on how exactly does a small market self-regulates better.

I would never argue economics with an economist (that’s not my wheel house) but the economy of GW2 is certainly doing very strange things IMHO, specifically the rapid commodization of almost every goods because of the huge incentive for everyone to be a supplier with xp gains for crafting. BTW, I think I know exactly the graph you’re thinking about which demonstrates the razoring of gross margins over the life of a discontinuous innovation (aww, shades of my old business strategy class). :-)

inanycase Wazabi there is a clear trend which can be teased out in a microeconomy like this one. I’m not “picking one data point,” this is from a dozen items over the length of their existence, albeit short length. Obviously, anyone knows that money supply is hugely important but it is not the only factor, which was my main point. We can draw the supply and demand graph and go aha! Prices are going down because supply is going up! But, this is happening for nearly every product, which can be an (albeit strange) driver for deflation. This prompts me to horde all my gold because the expectation is that prices will be less next week.

It’s been rather fun discussing this and points well taken but I will probably be leaving the thread unless it’s still tops tomorrow night. Cheers.

@Elusive.9162
Deflationary pressure from gold sink kicks in IF the game sinks more gold/hr than gold generated per hour from player activity. In that case, then yes. But if that’s not the case, gold sink only slows down inflation.

The event that TP isn’t up at the beginning causes a buildup of stock. Couple that with a fresh market where no one knows how to price their goods…it’s hard to distinguish between how much of the price difference is caused by stock buildup, how much is due to mis-price, and how much is due to actual supply/demand. I can’t give you an answer how long it will take for market to ‘self-fix’…and it is exactly because that can’t be determined, you won’t be able to determine how long to disable gold sink to accelerate that process either…just best just let it fix itself over time.

Ultimately though, there won’t be much effect at a relative level because it impacts every player. If you remove the sink, more money makes it into the game, inflationary pressure will just inflate the price…so relatively speaking your purchasing power remains the same. You are making 100c now, and purchasing something at 10c. When you’re making 200c without money sink, inflationary pressure will push the price of the goods to 20c.

@Lunesta.3742
You’re right in the sense that if all the price of goods are decreasing, it “could” be an indication of deflation, meaning they sink too much money. However as an individual player, I doubt we are able to observe the price change of every single item. If some item’s price are decreasing (say fine mats) and some others are raising, then it could be just a demand/supply shift. I believe John Smith will be looking at those data and determine the causes, and address them accordingly.

PS: I would never argue business strategy with you.

Wazabi.1439:

@Findecano.8124
I agree that crafting could use an overhaul to provide more utility and increase the complexity.

I disagree on server (smaller) market self regulates better. I think both will self regulate the same (it’s just a different environment but the same economic mechanism that regulates them), but it is the general benefit to the players that is different here. The biggest advantage of a large market is competition. That makes controlling AND profiting the market extremely difficult for any single person. Due to the volume of trade, price adjustments on supply and demand happens very quickly. That being said, I would like to hear your opinion on how exactly does a small market self-regulates better.

Let me start off with saying this: you’re probably right. My only frame of reference is smaller server-wide economies, and so ignorance plays a small part in this. On the other hand, I don’t know of many MMO economies that are this massive… as much as economies always operate on governing principles of economics, this feels like a bit of untested water.

Thus, what I cannot deny is the act of normal fluctuation resulting from supply and demand. It doesn’t matter how big or large an economy is; it always operates upon these principles. However, micro-economies tend to have their own specialized pricing based on unique demand needs and unique supply availability.

With such a utterly massive system of supply, in which everybody can be every craft and everybody can be a supplier (not to mention crafting is not versatile, which you agree), the levels of demand are not going to facilitate a profitable economy besides supply dumping for people who are bored/exp farming.

To put this in perspective, different servers across WoW tend to have somewhat similar pricing fluctuations. It’s actually quite phenomenal to see the laws of supply and demand replicate so well across severs that have no contact with one another (and you can’t attribute it to Auctioneer alone).

However, there is nevertheless natural variance within that server due to unique demands and unique levels of suppliers. It is a more intimate system that has more holes and gaps for people to fill. This, again, is also influenced by people being forced to choose their specialization and that not everybody can gather… which is not the case here.

Perhaps my phrasing of “self-regulates better/quicker” is misguided, because all systems regulate… arguably, as you say, a larger economy actually regulates quicker due to its massive size. Rather, I should have said there are more opportunities in a smaller economy.

TLDR: The TP really has a lot working against it, so I concede that my primary and only undeniable point is that stronger versatility is absolutely needed for this economy to survive. On the other hand, I still think that the more “intimate” server-wide economies allow for more opportunities for growth and supply niches. I was incorrect in saying that small servers “self-regulate” better.

Edits: edits for wording and word salad

Yes, there are more opportunities in smaller market that only a small subset of player can monetize it…often at the expanse of other players. Trading is a zero sum game. Now I understand what you’re trying to convey.

I don’t know if I agree that it comes at the expense of other players. It has the possibilities of monopolies, but in my experience there have rarely been issues in market monopolies. This would be more of an issue on very small servers. Small economies, for their benefits, have their pitfalls, as you mention. But I only say “smaller” when you’re comparing to a worldwide market.

This might be a bad analogy, but there’s a reason why there are several large stock markets across the world and not (a) thousands of tiny markets or (b) one, massive, compiled stock market. Much like small economies, for its pros, this worldwide TP system has its cons. In my opinion, unless the crafting system becomes incredibly dynamic (unlikely), I think it has more cons than pros.

The one, MAJOR pro I see of a worldwide market is for the longevity of the game and so that servers with population problems are not unduly punished. WoW is really a rough place to be on low pop servers… on multiple levels.

Interesting…I like the way you view things even though I don’t agree with some of them.
The reason for multiple stock exchange is due to the listing requirements. NASDAQ and NYSE has very different requirements. Reason there aren’t 1 big global stock exchange could be that. As to why there aren’t many tiny stock exchange is that it’s a large capital investment to start a stock exchange…and if you’re tiny, then you probably can’t offer a lot of options to investor…like mom/pop retail vs wall mart.

I find that the prices of limiting items is going up consistantly. Profit from crafting (or loss) is from inflation of costs more than deflation of sales. Crafting could use with needing a little more raw material (metal, cloth, wood) and less specials (blood, bone, etc) then the price of materials wouldn’t be tanking while specials are a gold mine.

There’s also the problem that, recently, some gold-earning mechanisms were hampered. Farming isn’t as effective as it was before, and the Dungeon rewards are also diminished (along with a higher difficulty in some specific dungeons).

That decreased the ammount of gold injected into the economy, and can even possibly increase the gold-sinks, if you take into account that the remaining dungeon-crawlers will have to spend more in armor repairs and won’t always be well-rewarded.

Another problem is that there aren’t many useful, consistent and reliable mechanisms for grabbing good gear (either for yourself or for feeding the TP):

• Random drop isn’t so reliable, specially when some players simply sell most of the drop at the NPC for quick gold, while others simply salvage them, others use some of them (high-lvl Rares) at Mystic Forge for trying to get Exotics and only a subset actually sells them at the TP;
• Crafting is suffering from lack of dynamism, and some people are simply doing it for the EXP and then flooding the TP with the crafted results; while some simply salvage them again, or sell at NPC for quick gold;
• Buying at NPCs for gold at specific locations (like the Cultural Sets, or the Order Sets). These ones are a problem, since the prices are imensely inflated and aren’t regulated by the current state of the economy (a single Rare piece usually costs 5 to >20x more than an equivalent [crafted or dropped] item at the TP). As a result, most players either ignore them or just get them for the skins or for achievements;
• Karma rewards also had their prices increased in the first few days. Most of them (Cultural weapons, in special) just aren’t worth buying anymore, because their prices don’t match the ammount of karma the average player would own at that given level, or because there are easier ways to get similar or better equipment (at the TP, for example). Not even their models are that useful, because most of them use the same models from the low-lvl gear for that race.
  …And most of the non-cultural Karma equipment (usually found on-field) are Blues and Greens, which are usually only worth it until the player can afford Rare stuff from the TP. Then, it just stocks up thousands of unused Karma points (and we can’t convert it to Gold anymore, because all the methods were considered “exploits”). So Karma becomes an almost dead currency at higher lvls;
• Exchanging them for Dungeon Tokens. After the added reward limiters and the increased difficulty, there’ll be less dungeon crawlers, and less people getting tokens. And since each item costs the equivalent of a few dozens of fully succesful runs, very very few people will actually bother to get Dungeon Sets at all.
• Quest rewards. They are mostly soulbound. And usually a joke (specially at higher levels). Not even worth counting;

So… if the money-income and item-income methods aren’t improved, we have two problems:
- The economy will still be deflated and highly deffensive;
- Many people will jump at the first good oportunity for grabbing easier money (since most of them have few or none); which will be considered “exploiting”, will be “corrected” and again the economy stays as it is. Weak and slow.

EDIT: Minor tweaks, and a few typos.

As long as money spawned into the world is greater than money winked, there won’t be deflation. These parameters are easily observable by dev. If that happens, just increase drop rate of junk. The game is still new, plenty of player activity generating income. Just look at a session of your play time, and count how much gold you make after it is sink. If that’s CONSISTENTLY negative, then there’s a possibility that there is an inflation. If it applies to everyone, then there’s definitely an inflation. If it is just you…well…you know where the problem is.

The market is not experiencing a deFlation.

There was a change in Harvesting some time ago. Everybody can mine from the same vein, chop wood from the same trees, pick the same plants, so those things dramatically dropped as anyone with proper equipment can obtain them. And then there are people who know what creatures drop what. Why should I farm Risen Grubs for Potent Venom Sacs when fireflies do just fine?

^ there was no change. This has been true since beta and beyond. It was in fact advertised as a small selling point, no crafting node stealing

John Smith.4610:

Lunesta.3742:

The economy (and prices) were moving up over the first two weeks, but have definitely deflated over the last week. Exotic tailored good prices have gone from 30-40s over cost to 50-60s BELOW cost. Very strange, this has to be novel for a MMO.

When something new is first released, there is a set of early adapters who discover and profit off the new items/markets. Because there is relatively few early adapters, prices are artificially high as supply is much lower than demand. As more players enter the market, the the price falls.

(I wish I could insert graphs)

This is a change in market saturation. It happens in every mmo because the new markets are introduced so frequently.

Could deal with this through a number of mechanisms. Most obvious solution would be the quantity style helicopter drop to get demand going (give everyone currency either through increased trophy prices or the mail). Krugman talks about that with his famous baby sitting club example that everyone has read a billionty times. Quantity theory is kind of out of date but then MMOs have unusual features (as has been alluded to) that make it relevant.

Other option would be more along the lines of Woodford/Sumner aggregate demand management. Not as sure how to do that sans a financial sector (oh how badly I wanted to take out a loan for speculation on the gold-gem index at release) but buying lowbie items and trophies for slightly above market could help get cash into the pockets of players.

I wish dungeon tokens were tradeable* as that’d provide a seriously obvious currency surrogate for quasi-OMO management. Late game would be handy to occasionally nuke the value of tokens by selling them for less than the market cost in order to reduce player wealth, for example. Worked amazingly well with ecto in GW1, players saw their stockpile reduced in value by about half after some changes to UW.

*Might conflict with the objective of giving “meaning” to the prestige armor but I have a feeling that a floating exchange rate set by players would give provide a significantly better metric for analyzing which dungeons sit where on the difficulty index based on the price at which this or that token is exchanged for gold. It’d be trivial to laser in on problem areas like CoF pre-nerf with the market providing an advance warning system.

And can I just say — apropos of nothing, obviously — that following the ToC and not referring to members of the staff in discussion results in seriously convoluted posts?

@aeon
Could you elaborate more on your proposals on how to implement it and how would it affect the dynamics of the economy? No disrespect…but your reply seems less than coherent to me and it is hard to determine your message here.

If my memory is correct, You are talking about Scott sumner? He’s a monetary theorist, that proposes using a different metric extracted from the market to set monetary policy. So…I can’t see the link here between increasing the money supply which does not change the purchasing power of players and Sumner’s work… And how would this help prevent market saturation in a new market.

EVE online has a world wide market with money trends set into it. Check it out if you can that is the 1st massive serve wide game with good rewards and good repair/refit strageties.

Isn’t EVE’s market a lot more complex though? As in, crafting seemed a pretty big deal, and then distances were also important. I haven’t actually played EVE much.

I see people keep complaining that items sell bellow or at vendor prices. I think the reason for this is that gold is hard to get, and money is deflated to the point that an item’s real value is significantly BELOW the vendor sale price. Obviously the vendor sale price serves as an artificial bottom, or the prices would be way lower.

At some point the bugs will be worked out and this will be impossible but my understanding is that you still cannot purchase the items that were bugged. If true then that means there is a “shadow inventory” out there of items that still need to be sold but are sitting in the TP and are not purchasable, therefore we are unable to ascertain on this end where those goods ultimately wind up.

Mr. Smith, however, CAN ascertain this because he has the raw data on the percentage of these auctions that are sold due to a bug, are removed and then subsequently whether they are resold at an actual greater than vendor cost value, destroyed, salvaged [and then what they should turn into in the aggregate].

That brings up an interesting note – people using this for temporary virtual storage until they get to town. Not a wise move IMO but unlike economics teaches us, I know that there are irrational actors in the system.

Again, [a] reason for this is not enough liquidity (not enough gold in the economy yet).

Fixed that for you.

This should mean you should invest in materials or items now, then sit on them and hope for inflation to kick in. I am actually thinking of doing that with some higher-level materials. Thoughts?

I think you should ensure that the amount of profit you make beats out the loss in purchasing power you will go through when your currency is devalued.

[Edited to add: since the supply is greater than demand right now it stands to reason that the value of said goods will be less than is “intended” – even in WoW after many years certain ranks within the crafting tiers had no supply so the crafted piece was less valuable than the base material to craft it. It stands to reason it will be no different here albeit on a grander scale so the increased price might overall be “less” in GW2 versus that mentioned in WoW.]

Think of ANet like the government…they can do all sorts of unexpected things to the economy, acting as the hardest factor to predict.

If I had to guess though, they’re going to turn all of the “common sense” speculation on its head and introduce more crafting/mystic forge recipes to make even the lower tier mats valued once a large mass of the playerbase hits 80. Or they’ll do what they did for wood already and inflate the recipe needs to match the inflation of material. Or, maybe they’ll keep crafting and other requirements the same, buy up a lot of the copper already in the market with their own accounts (or just remove it) and decrease nodes and respawn rates.

The moral of the story? The government (ANet) can/could do many things at any point in time to completely change the state of things, to the point where it’s more or less in your best interest to play the market as it currently is rather than look forward to a future that likely won’t ever be since they have -more- power than any actual government.

Ah, figures EVE would have the first of its kind. Knowing how EVE operates, it would not surprise me if its crafting was more complex. I do agree that the addition of buy orders (modeled off of EVE) was a great step in the right direction, but the crafting system is not built to match such a massive system.

I’m beating a dead horse now, though.

I’ve read that John Smith will be making some changes to help correct the low TP prices. How much needs changing? Many people are still just starting the game so the bulge hasn’t worked its way to the higher levels yet. Won’t this just correct itself when gold is easier to come by?

I also read that Anet is looking at changing the game to get more people to get upgrades more often. I’m not certain how they will accomplish this since it is so easy to level. Right now I’ve been averaging buying upgrades to my gear every 20 levels. That means there is a pile of stuff not in demand by me for many levels.

Lastly, I’m still leveling and don’t have really any spare cash. Between the upgrades which nearly set me back to zero, buying training books and all the map traveling I do there isn’t much to spare.

supermanboy.4592:

I’ve read that John Smith will be making some changes to help correct the low TP prices. How much needs changing? Many people are still just starting the game so the bulge hasn’t worked its way to the higher levels yet. Won’t this just correct itself when gold is easier to come by?

I also read that Anet is looking at changing the game to get more people to get upgrades more often. I’m not certain how they will accomplish this since it is so easy to level. Right now I’ve been averaging buying upgrades to my gear every 20 levels. That means there is a pile of stuff not in demand by me for many levels.

Lastly, I’m still leveling and don’t have really any spare cash. Between the upgrades which nearly set me back to zero, buying training books and all the map traveling I do there isn’t much to spare.

The majority of us are stuck with kitten-all because nothing other than buying gems and trading them in seems to be a decent source of income, while EVERYTHING sucks money out of you like a tick the size of a dump truck.

Meanwhile, as is the status-quo for an MMO, the gold-farmers, speed-clearers, and exploiters are sitting on mountains of gold, allowing them to snap up high-level equipment and pricing it FAR out of the reach of most of us.

Current price of item is driven by income (among other factors). If income increases, price of item is going to be increase. However, price of trash item probably won’t change at all even if income increase.

People that makes more money than you are better than you be it through illegal (exploits) or legal (trading, effort) method. Lv80 equipment are relatively cheap…only thing expansive are the exotics…that’s because there are more people willing to pay money for it now and very little supply. You can’t blame others for not being able to afford a Ferrari in your current income…you’ll just have to be content with something that’s within your reach given your ability to generate income…or improve your ability to generate income relative to others. It’s not like you can’t complete the game without exotics.

Actaully the only expensive things in the game are things that go tword making legendary weapons. Basic exotics are dirt cheap…cheaper than even race or faction yellows! Oh and the runes to make 20 slots bags lol.
So expensive things are things to make legendays and vendor items with price set by Anet. Thats it.

Wazabi, you summed it all up quite well.

Anyone want some piles of glittering dust?

Elusive.9162:

Isn’t EVE’s market a lot more complex though? As in, crafting seemed a pretty big deal, and then distances were also important. I haven’t actually played EVE much.

Yes, EVE’s market is localized (each zone has an independent market, and you have to travel there to put things up for sale or get your items), and there is no instant travel. r it was like that when I played some time back.

So there’s room for actual trade routes and such (which also allows for pirate ambushes,, yay). I would like to see something like that here, but the cry babies already complain that the instant teleports are too expensive. Just imagine all the QQ if you removed it entirely.

I’ve been watching the price of metal ore slowly creep up. I’d be interested to see which items are used to peg the current value of gold. Gems is an obvious first choice. In GW1 I could get a good feel for the value of gold by looking up the prices of either ectos, black dye, or superior runes of vigor. Consider them the “Big Mac Benchmark.”

Now that ore farming has been cut down to shreds by server hopping the price of ore is going to go up. WOOT!

In EVE the equivalents would be:

• even at level 80, a level 20 item is useful to you so all parts of the supply chain are desired.
• items are destroyed out the game making saturation less of a problem. I would like for repairs not to be pure money but maybe require a vial of blood repair kit (5 kits from 1 blood and an orichalcum bar for example) created by an armorsmith to repair your berserker heavy legs.
• gathering is a unique, time consuming and dedicated investment making supply a valuable proposition. Think cooldowns on certain rare crafting ingredients used in WoW and Rift. Gathering skills should have been limited as well.
• localized trading means opportunities shift, I have no idea how ANet could implement this but making trade server based and then have an option to move and sell stock on another server would be cool.

I’m not sure the economy in GW2 will remain healthy. It’s gonna go in a direction, and it will probably only benefit an extremely small proportion of the population that puts the size of their coffers and market nous ahead of just playing for the sake of playing. But then maybe that’s what ANet wants, people to feel they need to spend subscription levels of $$$$ each month on gems/gold to be able to enjoy the game.

The real problem as many of you alluded to is that there is substantial utility to be derived from crafting items even if you throw away the product. Between the EXP you get and and the ability to level your crafting skills as you craft, players are willing to sell the items for much lower than ‘cost’ because they are already obtaining more than enough benefit to justify their time investment just from the process of making something.

This added to the fact that raw materials essentially have no real acquisition cost — you can exp for gathering and materials drop while fighting monsters for other tasks — means that it would still be worth crafting even if you gave the stuff away.

As a result there is no ‘floor’ for prices on most goods — price insensitive supply? Then add to this that gear is so easy to get in this game and leveling is so fast that there is almost zero demand for gear — price insensitive demand?

So crafting is essentially a race to the top to be able to make the few end game pieces that there are no readily available substitutes for.

You might even be able to make profit on a small selection of goods before the majority of players level to being able to make them and flood the market, but I don’t see crafting as being a source of income for the majority of players.

I agree with bluejay’s initial point. Crafting has been at least for me something that has not really required any investment. I did do one big shot where I went up about 75 levels in crafting buy buying lots of mats, but they were cheap.

I disagree with the last two paragraphs. For now, this may be the case however consider this: When people have leveled up and are either leveling another character or new craft, since they will have access to more money from end game items and events they will have much more buying power. They will use this purchasing power to buy all the mats they need from the TP and use it to power level their crafts. This will drive up the price of goods to higher levels, and make low level farming of mats more viable for new, low level or poor players.

Whenever there is a spike in a system, there are shockwave effects that take time to reach equilibrium again. The beginning of the game was such a spike, since no TP existed before then. The game is still transitioning to its natural equilibrium as players level.

Findecano.8124:

Ah, figures EVE would have the first of its kind. Knowing how EVE operates, it would not surprise me if its crafting was more complex. I do agree that the addition of buy orders (modeled off of EVE) was a great step in the right direction, but the crafting system is not built to match such a massive system.

I’m beating a dead horse now, though.

There is many skills for crafting(and gathering|processing) in EvE, and they reduce cost of item production.
And i also don’t think, that this kind of market works for themepark in the long run.

I think the problem is being somewhat oversimplified. Firstly, overall I actually see gold undergoing massive INflation. I’m basing this off of both Gem prices and the price of big-ticket items on the TP. A week ago, 1 gold bought you 350-450 Gems depending on when you bought in. This week, the highest I’ve seen is around 270, with the lowest being 200 and an average of around 260. Since Gems have a value fixed to real-world currency, which is much more stable, this trend shows somewhere in the ballpark of 35% inflation in one week as compared to the US Dollar.

In addition to this, the “top priced items” have skyrocketed. A Dawn of Rage was roughly 15g a week or two ago, they are currently moving at around 80g. This can be partially attributed to there being more high-level players wanting to pursue Legendary weapons, but at the same time more high-level players should at least somewhat mitigate this by increasing the number of players actually able to obtain the weapon to sell. Abyss dye might be a better benchmark to use since it is available at all levels and, as a vanity item, the demand should be fairly constant as well. It was 3 gold and change last week, and is now nearly 6 gold at the time of this posting.

As far as bulk items go, we see a reverse trend. Crafting materials in particular are rock bottom, with base materials selling for only slightly above vendor cost in most cases. This doesn’t fit the inflation model we’re seeing, but this can be explained by oversupply. I’ll give a generous estimate that 90% of items crafted are made only to raise crafting level. There is simply no demand for crafted items aside from top-tier exotics at the moment, and everything made is either done so for the purpose of raising crafting levels to 400 or simply to gear yourself.

Now, in my own personal experience on my characters, I can say that without a doubt the limiting factor in my crafting leveling was rare materials, not basic ones. I was constantly selling off an oversupply of things like soft wood, copper, iron, mithril, etc. If that experience is shared by everyone at the moment, where nothing crafted from these materials is valuable except for leveling crafting, and each player gathers far more of these than they will use for this purpose and sells off the rest, then we can see why the market is so saturated with these items despite the inflation, and why they are usually selling for a copper above vendor price. The excess a player gathers is quite literally valueless. Only the top-quality materials are being used for anything but leveling the associated skill. This has gotten to the point where I don’t even mine anything but Orichalcum when I come across it, nor do I salvage anything but level 80 drops because they are more valuable when sold to a vendor than the sum of the materials they could possibly salvage to. For example, if a level 28 item can sell to a vendor for 36 copper, or could be salvaged for 1-3 iron, it makes no sense whatsoever to salvage the item as it will yield on average 2 iron each valued at about 7 copper, for a net loss of 22 copper not counting the salvage kit use.

Now, hopefully the economy will stabilize somewhat with the nerf of dungeon rewards (formerly the #1 preferred method of farming a ton of gold quickly), as well at the earlier nerf of WvW escort rewards which were the previous #1 problem. If that doesn’t work and there is still more gold flowing into the economy than being removed, we’ll have to be prepared to either accept further nerfs to gold gain or more gold sinks.

John Smith.4610:

I think deflating is the wrong word. I think you just mean gold is scarce. And the scarcity of gold means that all items have a low value. I don’t think this is necessarily true, there are other motivations keeping prices for some items low and some high.

But that’s literally what deflation means.

Deflation is an overall decrease in price level of most if not all item. That can only happen when money in circulation shrink. Changes in the supply and demand can also lower price but that’s not deflation.

Wazabi.1439:

Deflation is an overall decrease in price level of most if not all item. That can only happen when money in circulation shrink. Changes in the supply and demand can also lower price but that’s not deflation.

Seconded.

I’ve seen the prices of sigils and bags go up quite a bit in the last week or so. Not so long ago a major sigil of bloodlust was 2s, now it is 12s. That said, I may just be a victim of being the same average level as most players and am riding the buldge up to the top with everyone else.

That’s because Sigils, Runes, etc. are the only items that currently have any value at all. Everything else is so oversaturated that it’s literally post-scarcity. Can’t base your evaluation of the state of the currency on the price of items which are valueless. Look at iron ore, the price is the minimum above vendor, yes, but there are literally tens of millions of units for sale with no buy orders at all. Judging the overall value of gold based on that is like evaluating the value of the Euro on the cost of used candy wrappers.

supermanboy.4592:

I agree with bluejay’s initial point. Crafting has been at least for me something that has not really required any investment. I did do one big shot where I went up about 75 levels in crafting buy buying lots of mats, but they were cheap.

I disagree with the last two paragraphs. For now, this may be the case however consider this: When people have leveled up and are either leveling another character or new craft, since they will have access to more money from end game items and events they will have much more buying power. They will use this purchasing power to buy all the mats they need from the TP and use it to power level their crafts. This will drive up the price of goods to higher levels, and make low level farming of mats more viable for new, low level or poor players.

Whenever there is a spike in a system, there are shockwave effects that take time to reach equilibrium again. The beginning of the game was such a spike, since no TP existed before then. The game is still transitioning to its natural equilibrium as players level.

I think this would have the opposite affect. If you can afford to buy all the mats to powerlevel your craft you would most likely be even more inclined to dump the manufactured goods on the market for nothing. The only affect of powerleveling crafts on alts will be to increase mat costs which is already happening.