Guild Wars 2

Because jealousy.

John Smith.4610:

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

An awesome John Smith answer as always, although I cannot say that helps very much in learning or understanding anything …

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is an ideology called socialism that strives to achieve the same ideals as you, but it fails miserably because people are intrinsically different.

First of all, I am not asking about politics here, so the socialism analogy is inaccurate. I am asking about an in-game mechanic. And as far as I understand, especially a multi-player game like GW2 should aim for “fun for everyone”, or “fun socialism”, if you find this term more fitting.

Behellagh.1468:

My answer is why would you need “an effective tax on the rich”?

Fair question. I know from personal experience that there are huge differences in the personal in-game financial situation. (I know someone who had millions of gold, I know of people who have thousands of gold, and I know guys like me who have barely above ~50g). Having these differences by itself isn’t a problem, but we are all actors in the same in-game market. If we want to acquire goods, then we have to compete with everybody else for those goods, especially in markets where the supply is sparse. And I don’t necessarily mean “luxury” items like legendaries or ascended weapons, I mean “everyday” items like, say, buying sigils and runes when trying to test a new build, or buying a recipe for cooking your buff food. My understanding is that the prices of these items are so high because there are many financially potent buyers willing and able to pay that price. Hence, the “richness” of one part of the community does have a direct negative effect on the other “not-so-rich” part, it keeps the price level high. (Feel free to correct me if this is wrong.)

I’d like to note that me just having ~50g isn’t because I have not played the game enough (I played 2300+ hours), it is just that I personally don’t play for farming in-game currency. I understand that there are many players that have have lots of fun farming in games, and this is totally ok, but this just ain’t my understanding of fun. I do also not have the time and economical knowledge to “play the market” to make money. And I assume, many players, especially the many casually oriented players who “just play the game” and do not want to work on a farming schedule, are in a similar situation like me.

For all these players, not having much in-game currency means that there are items and parts of the game that are very hard or nigh impossible to access (crafting the recent ascended backpiece item is a good example for such a very hard to reach content). Now, you can of course say “suck it bro, your problem, you should have farmed CoF like me, haha!”. Or, you could ask yourself whether an in-game mechanic is conceivable that allows all players a somewhat similar — but by no means “completely equal” — access to the different parts of the game, and without forcing one half of the player base to adopt the play style of the other half.

Hence, I am wondering if a little bit of closing the gap betweens the wealth levels of players might not in fact be healthy for the game. I imagine this could make more of the game’s content broadly available for a large number of players.

And just to be clear: I don’t have an answer, I am just wondering.

~MRA

John Smith.4610:

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

please could you list all 22? im curious

I don’t see any problem with some players having more wealth than others.

The only problem comes when people buy not to use, but to sell higher. Of course they won’t always make a profit, but in the process they still make things more expensive for others, when they didn’t even need the stuff, and just bought the entire stock of something cheap just because they could.

Make any item acquired in the trading post account bound (that’ll unfortunately require duplicate slots for tradable collectibles, one account-wide one tradable) and people can only buy or sell, but never buy to sell.

Anyone wanting to make a profit from stuff sold in the trading post would then have to process it and sell the results, and not nearly as many people with higher acquisitive power would affect the prices for the rest without actually wanting to use the stuff.

MithranArkanere.8957:

The only problem comes when people buy not to use, but to sell higher. Of course they won’t always make a profit, but in the process they still make things more expensive for others, when they didn’t even need the stuff, and just bought the entire stock of something cheap just because they could.

There are lots of examples of that in the real world for decades and people do not have any problems with it. For example, the stock market. Most people dont buy stocks to actually use it to control the company. They buy in the hopes of selling it when it hits a higher price. Is that wrong?

Like in everything else in real life, the luxury goods that almost everyone wants to get, are expected to be expensive because of demand and supply. Are legendaries suppose to be dirt cheap? Of course not!

It is ridiculous to ask for AreaNet’s intervention just so that you can afford luxury item X. It is called “working for it”. In the real world, most people don’t go to work simply because they have nothing to do, so they decided to make some other people rich through their “blood and sweat.” They go to work so that they can afford to buy the things that they really want.

In the same way, either people trade in real money for gold or they grind for gold in this game one way or another instead of just doing what they feel like doing, found out that other people are earning more than them, then complain to ArenaNet for intervention!

If you want to earn as much gold as the rest of the players that you see, then pick up your lazy kitten and work for it! Not asking for ArenaNet’s intervention all the time because that would be the lazy way of solving your financial issues!

MithranArkanere.8957:

I don’t see any problem with some players having more wealth than others.

The only problem comes when people buy not to use, but to sell higher. Of course they won’t always make a profit, but in the process they still make things more expensive for others, when they didn’t even need the stuff, and just bought the entire stock of something cheap just because they could.

Make any item acquired in the trading post account bound (that’ll unfortunately require duplicate slots for tradable collectibles, one account-wide one tradable) and people can only buy or sell, but never buy to sell.

Anyone wanting to make a profit from stuff sold in the trading post would then have to process it and sell the results, and not nearly as many people with higher acquisitive power would affect the prices for the rest without actually wanting to use the stuff.

Or you just create a black market for items like skins.

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you want to earn as much gold as the rest of the players that you see, then pick up your lazy kitten and work for it!

If work is required, then it isn’t a game. It’s just another job.

Draknar.5748:

Or if you got more loot for failed events, that would be a reward for failing.

Just to play Devil’s advocate here, but you DO get more loot for failed events sometimes. Defending the Temples or Gates of Arah rewards far less loot than letting these events fail and then doing the meta-chains again. People on my server have been abused for trying to defend these locations for that very reason.

MRA.4758:

First of all, I am not asking about politics here, so the socialism analogy is inaccurate. I am asking about an in-game mechanic. And as far as I understand, especially a multi-player game like GW2 should aim for “fun for everyone”, or “fun socialism”, if you find this term more fitting.

Socialism is first and foremost an economic model. The politics come into play when a government uses Socialism as an economic model. For example, the US isn’t a Capitalist state (I know, I know Let’s not argue about it), it’s a representative democracy that uses capitalism as its basic economic model. In that regard, the socialism statement is completely correct.

My understanding is that the prices of these items are so high because there are many financially potent buyers willing and able to pay that price.

Your understanding is indeed incorrect. The prices are high because of basic supply and demand. Things like Sigils and Runes are based on RNG drops. There’s a very finite amount, and everyone wants Bloodlust and Force and Night and Scholars and what have you. High end food and many other high demand items are made from rare items that only drop in a few locations. Omnoms, Ori, Lodestones – they all are expensive because everyone would like them and the things made from them, but there aren’t enough to go around.

The result of this is that in a free market model like GW2 (or most of the real world), prices are matched to what the market will bare. This is, I think, what you’re getting at. If I get a Charged Lodestone drop, which currently goes for around 2.5g, I’d be foolish to list it at 10g and expect someone to actually buy it. I can do it, but it ain’t gonna work. On the other end, if I list it for 50s, someone’s going to snatch it up fast, but I’ve shorted myself around 2g on the deal. These prices aren’t the result of a few people with a lot of money. It’s the result of aggregate market forces pushing and pulling the price until it finds a happy medium.

You have to remember, these things aren’t stocks. They’re not just swapped back and forth by the rich and powerful to make a bit off each transaction. They’re consumed and leave the economy through crafting and use. That keeps demand high and supply low. If Anet changed CoE armor to all have Superior Scholar Runes instead of Golemancer, you’d see the price of Scholar Runes drop from 4g to nothing over night. High supply = low prices, and there’s nothing that any of the people with thousands of gold could do about it. There’s also lesser, and almost equivalent, items that are available for much, much less, so unless you’re into min/maxing, you’re really not missing out on anything.

For all these players, not having much in-game currency means that there are items and parts of the game that are very hard or nigh impossible to access (crafting the recent ascended backpiece item is a good example for such a very hard to reach content). Now, you can of course say “suck it bro, your problem, you should have farmed CoF like me, haha!”. Or, you could ask yourself whether an in-game mechanic is conceivable that allows all players a somewhat similar — but by no means “completely equal” — access to the different parts of the game, and without forcing one half of the player base to adopt the play style of the other half.

Outside of high level Fractals, I can’t think of anything that’s actually off limits to players because of money. Obviously the Fractal situation is one, because you need enough AR to survive, and that costs money (though the first tier is completely doable by people in normal dungeon running gear). Other than that, I’ve run dungeons just fine in Rares, and Exotics aren’t hard to come by, either through drops or dungeon tokens.

What you have to remember and appreciate is Anet’s position in this. They made a game for people to play, and the people playing need things to do. Part of that is having long term goals, and they need players to stick around for awhile trying to reach them. Time sinks are just part of MMOs. If everyone gets what they want quickly, companies have to produce more large content for people to consume, which is an expensive and time-consuming endevour. I think Anet’s actually done a pretty admirable job keeping the playing field level. You hit 80, you generally have enough cash/tokens/badges etc to get into the end game and WvW or run dungeons or what have you, then the rewards slowly trickle in. You decide you want an ascended weapon, so you slowly accumulate materials and craft your way to 500 and make it. It’s a long term thing, not something meant to be done in a few days. After gear, everything is really cosmetic, so you’re still on a level playing field with those that can afford the big ticket items. While you might not have everything you want in game, not having a lot of gold doesn’t put people at any real disadvantage mechanically.

Some people work hard, figure out the tp, plan ahead and read patch notes. Those kind of rich people are fine.
Some people have ridiculous rng luck finding precuesors, that’s not fine.

MithranArkanere.8957:

The only problem comes when people buy not to use, but to sell higher. Of course they won’t always make a profit, but in the process they still make things more expensive for others, when they didn’t even need the stuff, and just bought the entire stock of something cheap just because they could.

Make any item acquired in the trading post account bound (that’ll unfortunately require duplicate slots for tradable collectibles, one account-wide one tradable) and people can only buy or sell, but never buy to sell.

Anyone wanting to make a profit from stuff sold in the trading post would then have to process it and sell the results, and not nearly as many people with higher acquisitive power would affect the prices for the rest without actually wanting to use the stuff.

This comes up it seems at least once a week. There should be an Econ 101 sticky at the top of the forum that you have to read before you can post. I’m not trying to be snarky, but this very suggestion comes up ALL THE TIME in various flavors and there are many reasons as to why that is an unworkable idea.

John Smith.4610:

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

So why bother posting at all?

Sure, you can’t make money (for whatever reason) so let’s take it away from others. Because why would they have it any better than you, eh?

And no, I’m not one of those “rich”. But I hate jealousy,

John Smith.4610:

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

Awww. Not in the mood to give away for free a big part of the subtle cunning AreaNet pays you for? I’m not at all surprised. It’s a competitive industry, and I know I’d be taking notes…

For your amusement – the “Control Rod” strategy (something which cannot exist in a real world economy, but might make you laugh ).

Each time a Trading Post sale transaction goes through where a buyer pays the lowest sell price offered there is a 1% chance that the TP itself generates a copy of that item, sends it to the buyer, and takes the entire 100% of the coin paid out of the system (leaving the original item in place).

It makes the TP an invisible vendor that sells goods for coin at market-guided prices…

Gasoline.2570:

John Smith.4610:

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

So why bother posting at all?

Maybe so that people who are paying attention know when the topic has wandered into trade secrets territory.

MRA.4758:

Hence, I am wondering if a little bit of closing the gap betweens the wealth levels of players might not in fact be healthy for the game. I imagine this could make more of the game’s content broadly available for a large number of players.

And just to be clear: I don’t have an answer, I am just wondering.

~MRA

The Answer:

Get rid or the TP.

All items become account bound, including crafting mats, crafted items, random drops, etc.

If you can’t use something or don’t want it, you can sell it to a vendor for a fixed price. You can buy gear and crafting mats from vendors, also for a fixed price.

This allows Anet to set and control prices precisely:

A set of level 20 heavy armor costs X.

An ascended weapon (single-handed) costs Y.

Twilight costs Z.

This is what you’re asking for, what all of these threads are asking for, to do away with the market system entirely. However, this system would be extremely boring, and gives a huge advantage to players with deep pockets, who can calculate precisely how much gold they have to buy with real money to get the things they want.

It would also put JS out of a job, and we can’t have that, can we?

The arguments that Anet has to “do something” about the situation as it stands is simply short-sighted and missing the point entirely: the situation as it stands is working as intended.

When a rare item is desired by more than one person, everyone throws money at it and the person with the biggest pile of money wins. If he’s smart, that person then puts the item back up for sale at a higher price, and the rest of the people who want it go out and gather more money and the process begins again. The smart person then ends up with an even bigger pile of money than he started with, and the ability to buy more stuff and continue the process.

Of course, there are more people throwing money than there are items to buy, so some people are going to keep getting disappointed. Most of them keep grinding to get more money until they get what they want, some people get frustrated and quit, and a few demand that the prices be lowered until they can win it with their pile of money.

The problem with this demand is that the people with bigger piles of money still have bigger piles of money and so Anet has to make the item so common that these people don’t want it any more or already have enough so they drop out of the competition for it. Otherwise you will simply be outspent every time. But once this happens a lot of people don’t want the item any more, because lots of people have it.

So, Anet can’t take away people’s money because they have more than you do, and they can’t make rare items as common as dirt so no one wants them any more (please note: I’m not talking about rare-quality items, as these actually are as common as dirt and no one cares about them beyond the price of ectos). This leaves you with two options: get more money, or quit throwing money at things that you can’t afford.

Gene Archer.8560:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you want to earn as much gold as the rest of the players that you see, then pick up your lazy kitten and work for it!

If work is required, then it isn’t a game. It’s just another job.

If work is not required, then there would no such thing as gold or gems or loot and everybody would just be handed out the same stuff from ArenaNet.

Why does there need to be an effective tax just for the rich in the first place?

Because we’ve been lacking one so long that the economy has become heavily skewed in their favor. They designed a system in which players could game the markets to make far more money than their fellow players, it’s their responsibility to clean it up.

Maybe wrong here, sounds like your saying those who put forth the effort to gain more gold indirectly are hurting those who do not. And those who put forth that effort should not be rewarded to the extend it has an impact on the community who does not enjoy that play style.

You’re totally right, you are wrong there. Nobody’s complaining about people who put in more effort making more money, or saying that those who don’t put in effort should make more money. The problem is that there are plenty of people who have NOT put in more effort but that have made WAY more money, due to an imbalance in the way rewards are distributed in the game. It’s ANet’s job to try and correct that imbalance, to make equal effort offer equal rewards.

The rich became rich because they did what was necessary to do so. Which anyone is able to do if they put for the same effort. Yet those who don’t seem to complain.

A common misconception among some classes is that effort = reward, and that those who lack reward obviously must not have put in the effort. This is almost never the case. There are plenty of very rich people who put in fairly minimal effort and plenty of very poor people who work harder every day of their lives than any rich person ever has.

Stop trying to romanticize wealth, some hard working people are also wealthy, some are poor, some wealthy are hard working, some are not, wealth and hard work have minimal correlation in both the real world and the game world.

There are lots of examples of that in the real world for decades and people do not have any problems with it. For example, the stock market. Most people dont buy stocks to actually use it to control the company. They buy in the hopes of selling it when it hits a higher price. Is that wrong?

Yes, but that’s a whole different discussion.

tolunart.2095:

It would also put JS out of a job, and we can’t have that, can we?

Sure we can. So far as I see it, he hasn’t done anything to actually facilitate fun in this game.

Or would you like to try and make an argument for how fun it must be to collect the ten thousands of candy corn for the halloween mini or pail?

DarkSpirit.7046:

If work is not required, then there would no such thing as gold or gems or loot and everybody would just be handed out the same stuff from ArenaNet.

I see no problem with this.

Without JS, the forums would a lot less fun to read. That in itself is worth keeping him around.

On a more serious note: different people find different kinds of activities fun. You don’t get to declare what is “fun” for anyone but yourself.

tolunart.2095:

On a more serious note: different people find different kinds of activities fun. You don’t get to declare what is “fun” for anyone but yourself.

So then tell me how collecting 10s of thousands of candy corn is fun. Make an argument for how that can be fun.

Ohoni.6057:

@Ohoni.6057, actually YOU are the one who is wrong, day after day we read about people complaining about those who work the tp. Now unless you don’t know what “work” means, I guess you would assume that. Everyday we read it’s not fair the way some people make money. lol really, if they knew the “way” they would certainly be doing it. But are to lazy to learn the “way” then turn around and blame others for their laziness.

No, that’s not true. Some people are just not good with numbers, don’t have the talent needed to make the TP work for them. They could chuck money at it all day but wouldn’t get significantly more back out. There’s nothing shameful about that.

More importantly, mastering the TP should not be the method by which wealth is judged in an action/adventure MMO. That you have to master the TP’s economic model in order to make good money in an action-adventure game is a massive fail on whoever designed the game’s economic systems, and their primary duty since launch should have been in finding out how to fix it.

You say there are those who have not put any effort that don’t deserve it. How would you know? That comment is mere speculation and nothing more. So prove it.

To say that those who have a lot of money have put in the effort is mere speculation and nothing more. Prove it. All I know is that I’ve been playing several hours a day since launch, and don’t have nearly as much money as those who game the TP claim to have achieved.

People who don’t want to do what is necessary to earn money irl or a game are the first to complain, and have a higher since of entitlement. imo people who come here to complain about making money in game are the same type of people who irl don’t want to work but then complain the government isn’t giving them enough money to survive. It’s ALAWYS someone else’s fault.

So if they changed the games systems such that it became impossible to make more money off the TP than you put into it, are you saying you wouldn’t complain about that? I think we have our ideal solution then, let’s do that.

You still have yet to show how these people hurt the game for others, in this thread or any others you made here. Until you can do that you have no reason to be angry or making the claims you are.

And you don’t need the amount of money that these people make in order to enjoy the game. There is plenty of gold to be made in PvE such as dungeons or targeted farming as some examples to afford what you need to play any part of the game. Any feelings of inadequate wealth is self imposed, not the fault of the designers.

And if the TP doesn’t take work why don’t you give it a try so you can make how ever much you need to feel better.

@Ohoni.6057

Traders provide liquidity to other players.

The reason discontinued items are still on the market is because of traders. The reason prices don’t spike up and down every day is because of traders.

If traders were stopped the only time you’d be able to get limited skins is during the events themselves, and your drops wouldn’t have a predictable price as it would all depend on at what time you’re playing.

Unlike farming, trading must be on benifit to two other people. Farmers pull money out of thin air and cause inflation, traders compete against themselves in order to provide the best deals to buyers and sellers. No one is being forced to sell to traders, or to have their items bought by traders- they’re simply the ones offering the highest and lowest prices.

Removing traders reduces the time things take to sell and be bought, it also reduces the money you get for your items and the amount you need to pay to buy them.

And all this to fix a ridiculous philosophical problem. Redistribution of income in reality is necessary as otherwise hoarding can result in people starving in the streets- but we’re not talking about reality- we’re talking about a video game where there are zero necessities. Characters don’t starve, or require housing, or heat, or water and so acting as if the same impetus exists for equality is misleading as best and closer to ignorant.

MRA.4758:

-Snip-

Hence, I am wondering if a little bit of closing the gap betweens the wealth levels of players might not in fact be healthy for the game. I imagine this could make more of the game’s content broadly available for a large number of players.

And just to be clear: I don’t have an answer, I am just wondering.

~MRA

I agree in some sense that a game like this shouldn’t imitate real life by too much. Neither can it be completely different (since humans are playing it and controlling it to that extent). The problem is that since the game as an economy and it is not capped directly in any sense (no limit of gold) we end up running into something that resembles a real world simulation.

Smith probably is probably mulling a few ideas over himself. Though being an economist I think he finds it way more interesting to just watch how the simulation plays out and fixing leaks here and there (plus obviously putting in a small tweak when outrage grows high enough).

Still, here are some ideas I think can solve, or make the game economy a wee bit more interesting.

1. Global resource and gold being physically limited. Just like the Gem system there are only a certain amount of gems circulating in the game, more gems are only added when someone purchases gems with real money.

Similarly if gold would be physically limited to the amount farmed from gold nodes we would see a significant shift in player economy, interaction etc. That means gold earned from quests, and other things would be dependent on amount of gold available globally. With it we would see massive recessions, booms, draughts and crashes.

While this most likely would create more problems than it would solve. I think it would be a very interesting concept. Of course we could only have gold and not silver and copper as smaller denominations as these could potentially increase in value over gold if they were scarce. We would also see that farming gold nodes would be the new thing in game, so there should be a gold node resource cap. Similarly this wouldn’t function without a duplication system since players would own all the wealth and no npc would be able to pay for say dungeon runs.

So all in all such an idea would have to be carefully crafted. Still, it’s by far the most rad idea on changing the economy.

2. A much simpler idea is to gate gold revenue by time spent in game over a running daily or weekly period. This would essentially defer players from spending long sessions in game as the time value of gold would decrease with each hour played. Essentially this would lead to someone finding optimal game times and exploiting them for max gold gain/hour, though that wouldn’t necessarily make them any richer than others who has a lower threshold for time value.

Of course this idea would irritate significant part of the player population and so I believe gradually substituting gold gain with increased loot chances for resources would balance it out. Especially base resources which are scarce (Linen anyone?). This could even out the playfield a lot. This because, players who spend more time in game than others earn less money per hour spent in game, but more resources which they can sell at initially high prices however which will due to the increase in supply drop in price providing better prices for poorer players.

While this idea surely has a lot of cons as well, it’s much more simply implemented, though it requires quite a bit of code.

3. This one is quite controversial. Shutting down the TP, creating a bartering UI. This removes information from the market. Right now information is free, more or less. If you want to buy 250 bolts of linen: you just open the TP and check the prices of linen, since the market is global, the quote you get on the TP is the current market price (nobody can buy it cheaper at that very moment).

Remove the TP, and information in the market shifts. 250 bolts of linen? Now you have to ask in chat. The chance of you finding someone selling bolts of linen is smaller and the chance you are getting it for the best price available is miniscule.

The con to this is that convenience is thrown out the window, and most players have to rely more on their own gathering skills.

The pro is that wealth in terms of gold plays a much lesser part of the equation in a player’s measure of success. Someone buys a legendary for 50g another buys the same one for 2500g.

Such a player economy is dangerous, but levels the playing field a lot more by creating chaos.

I have a few more ideas but got a bit tired of writing.

Peas out!

You still have yet to show how these people hurt the game for others, in this thread or any others you made here. Until you can do that you have no reason to be angry or making the claims you are.

The current market prices of high end goods would be unsustainable without the consolidation of wealth brought about by TP farming.

And you don’t need the amount of money that these people make in order to enjoy the game. There is plenty of gold to be made in PvE such as dungeons or targeted farming as some examples to afford what you need to play any part of the game. Any feelings of inadequate wealth is self imposed, not the fault of the designers.

That’s not your choice to make. If I want to be able to afford the things that I currently can’t, then that’s my prerogative. It’s the developers that set how much each activity in the game rewards, including the TP, by controlling the supply of items entering the economy, and the amount of gold each activity offers. If I want something, and they provided both a low enough supply of it that it is very expensive AND they set up the game to hand out rewards so minimally that I do not have enough to afford it, then yes, that is their fault because they set up those conditions.

And if the TP doesn’t take work why don’t you give it a try so you can make how ever much you need to feel better.

I’m not very good at it. I just don’t have a head for economics. I am not good at figuring out which things will give me a good profit, I’m bad at figuring out the best time to buy, and bad at figuring out the best time to sell. Not being able to make these choices well should not be confused with an unwillingness to work, I work plenty hard, just in other areas of the game that I’m more skilled in. I could spend ten times as much time as a skilled TP flipper on the TP and end up making little if any returns on my efforts, it would be a waste of my effort.

Again, I’ve never suggested that they offer anything for nothing, just that they need to more fairly balance reward for effort, by making more activities in the game be equally as rewarding as the TP, or by making the TP equally as rewarding as the other aspects of the game.

Traders provide liquidity to other players.

Nope, roll again. Traders are completely unnecessary to the other players. Without traders, the same items would be added to the economy, and the same items would be taken away, there just wouldn’t be middlemen siphoning profits off the deal. “Traders provide liquidity” is some weird mantra that traders typically spout in every one of these threads, but it’s complete nonsense.

The reason discontinued items are still on the market is because of traders

This is true enough, but if ANet wanted those items to be available, and the traders weren’t providing them, then they could just drop more back into the game, as they have done in the past. Traders have a niche here, but it’s one of their own creation, and if they ceased to provide it, then the niche would cease to be necessary.

The reason prices don’t spike up and down every day is because of traders

Perhaps, but they already fluctuate quite a bit over time, and a lot of that comes down to poor feedback from the developers. If they just listed the average sell-through price of items then the average consumer would have a much better idea what the fair value of the item was, and would be much more likely to list that fair value as their asking price, rather than aiming excessively high or low out of ignorance.

Removing traders reduces the time things take to sell and be bought, it also reduces the money you get for your items and the amount you need to pay to buy them.

Removing traders means that either the person buying the item gets a better deal, or the person selling it gets the better deal, either case is preferable to neither getting the best deal and the trader pocketing the difference.

And all this to fix a ridiculous philosophical problem. Redistribution of income in reality is necessary as otherwise hoarding can result in people starving in the streets- but we’re not talking about reality- we’re talking about a video game where there are zero necessities.

Yeah, but since it is a game, the goal should be that everyone should have fun, and if some people can buy anything they want, while other people can’t afford a lot of the stuff they want, then there is a fun differential. Income inequality is still bad even if everyone’s food and housing are accounted for.

Still, here are some ideas I think can solve, or make the game economy a wee bit more interesting.

Those ideas are all horrible. They make it much easier for people that work the system to make money, and much harder for anyone else to keep up, because they’;ll have no idea what’s going on. ESO’s economy, for example, is a great case for how to NEVER do an ingame economy. It’s a fiasco.

The ideal system would be one in which even the most casual and uninterested player would be able to make the wisest possible decisions on the market, being informed plainly what the ramifications of his choices are. He should know that if he sells something for the best price right now, he would likely make X more if he sells it tomorrow, and Y more if he sells it next week. He should know not only the current buy and sell orders available, but more importantly what prices the item actually moves for, so he has a better idea of what to over or under-cut the existing prices to get the best possible deal within their ideal timeframe.

Behellagh.1468:

My answer is why would you need “an effective tax on the rich”?

Well, most of the reasons you might pull from the real world (the tight coupling between wealth and political power that makes concentrated wealth toxic to democracy, control of critical resources enabling widespread rent extraction, etc) simply do not apply here. It’s certainly not a trivial question to answer.

A few big reasons spring to mind.

First, you need to have some semblance of fairness. People care a lot about the rewards they get in game; they want the rewards they get to feel valuable and worthwhile, and that doesn’t happen when other players are earning vastly superior rewards. One of the worst examples was the D3 auction house; if you were not a player on the leading edge of the population, nothing you ever found was worthwhile – ‘trash tier’ drops from the highest progress players outperformed everything you were likely to ever see, and it made a game that was all about loot really have terrible loot for most of the player base.

You have a similar issue here; while not anywhere near as bad as D3, when you have players with huge amounts of money that can buy whatever they want at will, 3-5 gold an hour from playing the game can feel like you’re getting nowhere fast – especially when the items that make you stand out in a crowd take hundreds of hours of farming at that rate.

There’s the issue that you have to sink the money from somewhere. Given that you want your rewards to be perceived as fair, it would follow that sinking that money from the players earning outsized rewards would be preferable to sinking it from the players lagging behind the reward curve. Doing so is not necessarily easy to do, especially since it is imperative that it is done in a way that does not feel punitive, but it’s the goal nonetheless.

Another, minor issue is one of volatility. Simply put, people with enormous amounts of wealth sitting around have a loaded economic weapon that can go off in response to any economic news and drive volumes, and prices, through the roof quickly. Stability in prices is an important component in making people trust your economy; similar prices day to day makes people trust your economy, and they are more willing to invest in it. Prices on items shooting through the roof on faint rumors does not engender trust, and to that end encouraging the heaviest hitters to spend and not hoard their money is worthwhile for smoothing out the surges and encouraging stability.

I’m sure there are more, these are simply the most prominent reasons in my mind today.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Gene Archer.8560:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you want to earn as much gold as the rest of the players that you see, then pick up your lazy kitten and work for it!

If work is required, then it isn’t a game. It’s just another job.

If work is not required, then there would no such thing as gold or gems or loot and everybody would just be handed out the same stuff from ArenaNet.

There are plenty of activities in the game that could be more rewarding but are not because omg ppl shud werk fur gaem lut!!! The dichotomy you’re drawing of the only options being slave labor grinding for upgrades or everything given for free when you start is a false one.

Another reason to ‘tax the rich’ is to prevent market speculation. Just before ascended armor was introduced, people with gold to spare bought huge amounts of cloth materials just to sell them at much higher value later. If you have many rich people doing this, the overall cost of materials will increase because the poor simply can’t make use of this effect as much as the rich can. Ergo, money makes money and also ensures it doesn’t go to the hands of the poor. It’s an effect that strengthens itself and while not inherently bad, it is something you may want to control a bit to avoid excesses.

Taxing the rich becomes moot when you consider that you can get rich by buying gems ad converting them to gold. Why would Anet punish those people?

nekretaal.6485:

The coin from champ bags is a big reason why ecto costs 38 silver today instead of 20 silver.

Anet has a good idea of how much gold they are taking out of the economy with the changes. I’m inclined to support them here.

Plus the waypoint changes essentially double your expenses on a death.

Not charging for armor repairs in WvW is a good change.

Ummm. Champ farming really doesnt actually make much pure money. You get about 40 bags at most a hour in any champ farm (much, much harder now since the invasions got nerfed). Thats 40×6s = 2.4g.

ACP1+3 is 30mins and 3.5g. CoE full run is 3.75g, takes 45mins. Anyone who’s not on heavy doses of drugs can do those easily.

You talk as though having a lot of gold is an issue to the game society, for your argument, sadly not. We are an intrinsic part of the community, imagine us like those big corporate companies that charge a lot. You complain that we charge a lot, but in order to maintain a stable, competitive market, we are needed – with us in place, consumers know that they will have to pay ‘x’ for a certain good or service. Without us, volatility within the market rapidly increases, no longer do you have 5-10 sellers all trying to sell 200,000 silk scraps, rather you have 100-200 all trying to sell that number – prices will rise and fall dramatically causing confusion and putting a lot of people off their goals. As a result we maintain the circular flow of income, thus making sure that prices keep in line with inflation, rather than falling and creating deflation – which is good for no one. As a I said earlier, we are an intrinsic part of the community – we need the consumer to buy our stuff, and the consumer needs us to sell it at a stable price.

With this, your suggestion of a tax for rich people with a lot of gold is not at all implementable – it will only mess up the market for everyone else, just like in real life where governments put up taxes for high earners through income tax (e.g. 50%). This results in those who earn a lot taking advantage of a tax loophole to make sure they keep as near 100% of their money as possible. Likewise in GW2, if I see that I am going to be charged 50% on all my TP earnings, I would just pass it on to the consumer, I will just add that 50% tax on to my listing. Alternatively I could just not use the TP anymore for selling stuff, in which case my large amount of gold is going to keep me going with purchases for a very long time – either way, it’s not effective.

Playing the TP will always be the best way of earning gold in game, because it cannot be nerfed – the time, effort, risk, and knowledge required to do it effectively is much higher than any other gold earning method in the game – thus it has the biggest payout. If you are interested in getting involved, you may want to look into learning about market forces in an economy – there are some brilliant resources out there – make use of them!

Behellagh.1468:

Hey! Someone plays a lot more than I do and have more stuff, that’s unfair! Is that your point? You ignore those who made their fortunes early with repetitive dungeon speed runs, T6 ore farming or doing the world boss tour on every single character all day. Sure the devs have nerfed those activities because they bring new currency into the game. The TP simply moves it around between players and the fees and taxes are there to siphon a portion of it.

I have a feeling the complaints aren’t really against the people who do speedruns, T6 ore farming (which has a massive nerf incoming due to the kitten megaserver) or world bosses (also soon to be nerfed by the megaserver.) The complaints are more directed at TP playing, which in itself isn’t a bad thing. The problem is this game rewards that activity the most and never nerfs it (through restrictions on how many items can be listed per day or at one time for instance as I’ve seen in other games), whilst continually nerfing sources of income that actually involve playing the game. Right now gaming skills mean squat regarding what a person can earn due to the vast majority of items being available on the TP. Then there are people like me who do the boss tours, gather mats on multiple toons sometimes and do a few dungeon runs and are doing alright, but could never compare to those folks who play the TP. In other games if you saw people with a top tier armor set or weapon, you know they did ‘x’ dungeon or raid and had the skill to complete it. Here you see someone with a kitten tons of legendaries and it’s far more likely they’re a TP player… or possible a speedrun clearer, the later I find less problems with since at least they’re playing the game.

I think some problems regarding the feelings of inequity would be resolved if we could earn more from doing specific, challenging content. That’s just my opinion on why this topic keeps cropping up and why people keep suggesting ways to tax the “rich” more.

Large TP transactions already are taxed by duzens of gold, when i sold my Shield Skin, i paid 170 Gold just for put it selling.

If that is too cheap …

Gene Archer.8560:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Even though you see no problem with every character wearing a standard uniform like in communist countries or in prison, a lot of us do.

Wow. Gotta say I am impressed. You went straight for the guilt by association.

Bravo sir. Bra-kittening-vo.

Though I’ll humor you though. (department of redundancy department)

How does Anet handing out all the items translate to everyone looking the same or having the same uniform? Are you going to seriously suggest that everyone would run around with the exact same gear?

Because every one would be running around with legendaries and ascended gear because it is now worthless.

Ohoni.6057:

The current market prices of high end goods would be unsustainable without the consolidation of wealth brought about by TP farming.

That’s not your choice to make. If I want to be able to afford the things that I currently can’t, then that’s my prerogative. It’s the developers that set how much each activity in the game rewards, including the TP, by controlling the supply of items entering the economy, and the amount of gold each activity offers. If I want something, and they provided both a low enough supply of it that it is very expensive AND they set up the game to hand out rewards so minimally that I do not have enough to afford it, then yes, that is their fault because they set up those conditions.

I’m not very good at it. I just don’t have a head for economics. I am not good at figuring out which things will give me a good profit, I’m bad at figuring out the best time to buy, and bad at figuring out the best time to sell. Not being able to make these choices well should not be confused with an unwillingness to work, I work plenty hard, just in other areas of the game that I’m more skilled in. I could spend ten times as much time as a skilled TP flipper on the TP and end up making little if any returns on my efforts, it would be a waste of my effort.

Again, I’ve never suggested that they offer anything for nothing, just that they need to more fairly balance reward for effort, by making more activities in the game be equally as rewarding as the TP, or by making the TP equally as rewarding as the other aspects of the game.

High end goods are at the value they are because that is what people are willing to pay for them due to several factors such as scarcity, desire and/or crafting cost. There aren’t a bunch of cartoon fat cats sitting around maniacally laughing as they sell the only supply of an item at gouging prices. Despite being the most expensive high end item I see plenty of people running around with legendaries so these prices can’t be that unobtainable either through crafting, buying with gold, buying with gems, or a combination.

I don’t really know what to think of your second portion as it sounded like “If I want it, it should be handed to me”.

You can’t put limits on the TP without hurting everyone. And if some of the profits that were made on the TP were given out in the game then it would create hyperinflation as there would not be enough gold sinks to counteract this. Not that there aren’t rewarding ways to make money in PvE. Dungeons, crafting, and farming if you know what you are doing can yield more money than your average player and still be more than enough to enjoy the game.

cranos.5913:

I know a guy who has 300k+ gold atm. Wouldn’t mind seeing him get taxed. :P

Wow, he’s either very luck, or… well I guess he could have grinded that gold but no I can’t imagine the amount of grind required. Still I’m all ears as to the secret

Esmee.1067:

Why is everyone panicking out by champion bags dropping less money? Don’t worry, if this does nerf champiom farming, someone will find another brainless grind to make gold with.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

nekretaal.6485:

Anet has a good idea of how much gold they are taking out of the economy with the changes. I’m inclined to support them here.

One would imagine, after all ANet is in a far better position to generate statistics what is or isn’t going on. Unless we as players receive word otherwise, I’d imagine the decision is made based on real data. Sure we can speculate about the outcome but simply assuming ANet is shooting from the hip seems wrong.

Vukorep.3081:

1% increase on tp is 1% increase for all, poor and rich…

players with over 100g wont feel the +5silver cost that comes with 1%increase but players with 10g will…

so my questions is: how does “tax the rich” work if the poor get effected just as well?

PS: Everyone can play the tp….seriously.. everyone

Oh mister one percent can’t see why us dirty plebs can’t pull ourself up by our bootstraps and also become rich! Next thing you know you’ll be cutting relieve aid to Lions Arch, hiking up Asura Experiment/Accident insurance, de-fund the national feed a Charr cub program.
Tax the 1%!

mtpelion.4562:

Basically, while the TP tycoons may be sitting on fat stacks of coin, they get that coin from everyone who buys things. If you increase the cost of the transaction (i.e., increasing the tax), the guy who is selling (the “rich”) is simply going to raise his prices and the guy who is buying (the “poor”) is going to wind up spending even more money to get the same thing.

So we need to create anti-monopoly laws? Yeah, TP has been a bit too laissez-faire for me.

MRA.4758:

But please allow me ask: According to your (or everybody else’s) professional expertise, what would be “an effective tax on the rich” that would help to fight the dire income inequality within the game? Or is this social inequality among player characters something we just have to accept as set in stone?

~MRA

Well socialism get a bad rap these days but…

Gasoline.2570:

John Smith.4610:

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

So why bother posting at all?

To indicate that ANet is listening and taking note?

Ohoni.6057:

No, that’s not true. Some people are just not good with numbers, don’t have the talent needed to make the TP work for them. They could chuck money at it all day but wouldn’t get significantly more back out. There’s nothing shameful about that.

Yeah we all have skills, just not always the same skills or necessarily marketable skills…

DarkSpirit.7046:

Gene Archer.8560:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If work is not required, then there would no such thing as gold or gems or loot and everybody would just be handed out the same stuff from ArenaNet.

I see no problem with this.

Even though you see no problem with every character wearing a standard uniform like in communist countries or in prison, a lot of us do.

Like I said, bad rap.

A economic debate such as this is interesting to read, as I dont really know much about it. But I wondering about something that hasnt been mentioned, if I dont have overlooked it.
As long a Anet “owns” the economy, and have their intention with it, can you really compare real life economic with gw2’s?
I obviuosly dont know, but surely Anet would look upon the TP as a tool to help making money for them as everything else in the game is supposed to do?
As in keeping prises relatively high compared to most players ingame income, to “nudge” so many players as possible to buying gems?

The champ coin nerf is offset by the increases in coin via spvp. It really doesn’t do anything to combat inflation via one means then aide it via another. But what do I know? I don’t really see any reason a tail end progressive tax wouldn’t benefit the game as a whole. More coinage would be reduced. It would be taken on the tail end to have the least chance of being passed on. It would slow the widening of wealth disparity. How would it be implemented? Idk , that’s not my job, ppl are paid for these types of things.

JoeytheHutt.1742:

A economic debate such as this is interesting to read, as I dont really know much about it. But I wondering about something that hasnt been mentioned, if I dont have overlooked it.
As long a Anet “owns” the economy, and have their intention with it, can you really compare real life economic with gw2’s?
I obviuosly dont know, but surely Anet would look upon the TP as a tool to help making money for them as everything else in the game is supposed to do?
As in keeping prises relatively high compared to most players ingame income, to “nudge” so many players as possible to buying gems?

Yup! The TP’s purpose is to help remove gold from the game, through taxes, to make it more scarce and reduce inflation. Thus buying gems is a suitable alternative to farming the gold through traditional means. So when you open up the TP and you see that long list of legandaries with really high prices, players feel that it would be better to spend money on gems to convert to gold.

Edit: That’s not to say that the in game economy doesn’t mirror a real world economy. There are still many ways in which it works the same that a lot of the same economic principles apply.

So many things to touch on here but I will be brief.

1. The people who work/play the TP sell to the people who want things now at the price they will pay and buy from people at the price things are listed for. Most of these people are simply flipping from the lowest price they can find to the highest.

2.

I’m not very good at it. I just don’t have a head for economics. I am not good at figuring out which things will give me a good profit, I’m bad at figuring out the best time to buy, and bad at figuring out the best time to sell……snip…

Perhaps, but they(prices) already fluctuate quite a bit over time, and a lot of that comes down to poor feedback from the developers.

It isn’t about being “good” at playing the TP. It is about doing research and geting expirienced with it. I barely made it out of high school math with a passing grade but I can still turn a little profit of playing it from reading and learning about the TP. All this I did on my own by making the decision I would learn about it. It takes basic math to succeed. All you need to do is learn to multiply by .85.

3.

The ideal system would be one in which even the most casual and uninterested player would be able to make the wisest possible decisions on the market, being informed plainly what the ramifications of his choices are. He should know that if he sells something for the best price right now, he would likely make X more if he sells it tomorrow, and Y more if he sells it next week.

And this sums up what you want. You want the same rewards from working the TP as someone who has put in the PERSONAL EFFORT to research prices on the TP. You are also asking the Dev’s to somehow predict the future FOR YOU through their TP interface.

4. I decided early on not to bother grinding out a Legendary. I didn’t wnt to farm the whole thing out. I chose not to do the backend work involved in Crafting a Legendary. I do not have a Legendary.

5. I chose to find some niche crafting markets where I could make a little gold. I chose to learn the TP and how it worked by reading articles online and watching videos.(just like I did when I wanted to learn how to speed run a few dugeons)

You also dont understand how much work is needed to make the amount of gold you are jelly of off the TP. You keep saying you want to play how you want and that is fine for you but dont think you know how much effort is being put into something you, self admittedly, know little to nothing about. Are you jelly of 400 gold? 1k? Is it coins you are jelly of or investments too? I mean the 50 minis all have a cost value assigned to them but dont count towards anyones wallet.

This argument will just go on forever. We have a whole generation of kids who were told their whole lives that everyone is equal and everyone is special. Now unfortunately they are being forced to realize that no one is equal and some people are just significantly better than others at things. Yes, some players are much better than you at making gold, there is nothing you can do about this. No matter how many restrictions you put on them they are still going to be better than you and will still end up with more gold than you.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This argument will just go on forever. We have a whole generation of kids who were told their whole lives that everyone is equal and everyone is special.

But Evon said im special.

Gene Archer.8560:

How does Anet handing out all the items translate to everyone looking the same or having the same uniform? Are you going to seriously suggest that everyone would run around with the exact same gear?

That is what you are saying. There would be no loot, no gold, no gems, and everyone just gets the same stuff from ArenaNet as handouts. This way, everyone would be equal and would look equal by wearing the same uniform like in communist countries and prisons.

Schizo.1375:

Because every one would be running around with legendaries and ascended gear because it is now worthless.

Everyone should be running around in ascended gear, anyway. BiS gear is supposed to be easily obtainable so that everyone, by level 80, has BiS gear. As for Legendaries? Not everyone likes their looks, so they’d skin over those with something they do like.

As for their worth? The only worth people ever talk about with Legendaries is prestige, and well, we all know just how prestigious Legendaries are. (hint: the answer is not very)

Gene Archer.8560:

Schizo.1375:

Because every one would be running around with legendaries and ascended gear because it is now worthless.

Everyone should be running around in ascended gear, anyway. BiS gear is supposed to be easily obtainable so that everyone, by level 80, has BiS gear. As for Legendaries? Not everyone likes their looks, so they’d skin over those with something they do like.

As for their worth? The only worth people ever talk about with Legendaries is prestige, and well, we all know just how prestigious Legendaries are. (hint: the answer is not very)

Wrong. No one needs ascended gear. Exotic is the only lvl 80 gear that anyone every needs. If you compare the stats between exotic and ascended the difference is so insignificant that character build and play skill are more deciding factors. Ascended gear is just a end game goal for people who like those sorts of things. Its meant to be the best level in name only, a goal to strive for. If you don’t want to get it don’t get it and you can still be better than those who do.

And your devaluoing of legendaries only proves my point.

You talk as though having a lot of gold is an issue to the game society, for your argument, sadly not. We are an intrinsic part of the community, imagine us like those big corporate companies that charge a lot. You complain that we charge a lot, but in order to maintain a stable, competitive market, we are needed – with us in place, consumers know that they will have to pay ‘x’ for a certain good or service. Without us, volatility within the market rapidly increases, no longer do you have 5-10 sellers all trying to sell 200,000 silk scraps, rather you have 100-200 all trying to sell that number – prices will rise and fall dramatically causing confusion and putting a lot of people off their goals. As a result we maintain the circular flow of income, thus making sure that prices keep in line with inflation, rather than falling and creating deflation – which is good for no one. As a I said earlier, we are an intrinsic part of the community – we need the consumer to buy our stuff, and the consumer needs us to sell it at a stable price.

Lol.

You can’t put limits on the TP without hurting everyone. And if some of the profits that were made on the TP were given out in the game then it would create hyperinflation as there would not be enough gold sinks to counteract this. Not that there aren’t rewarding ways to make money in PvE. Dungeons, crafting, and farming if you know what you are doing can yield more money than your average player and still be more than enough to enjoy the game.

Bind on Purchase. Done.

The champ coin nerf is offset by the increases in coin via spvp.

No way is that true. If you never sPvP (like I never sPvP), then an increase in sPvP coin means nothing to you. Nerfing champ coin is just nerfing champ coin, it’s not offset by anything that would apply to people who kill champs. For it to be properly offset, the new gains would have to be for similar activities, not for some completely separate element of the game. If sPvP’s coin drops are causing a problem, then the solution needs to come entirely out of sPvP, not from other elements of the game.

It isn’t about being “good” at playing the TP. It is about doing research and geting expirienced with it. I barely made it out of high school math with a passing grade but I can still turn a little profit of playing it from reading and learning about the TP. All this I did on my own by making the decision I would learn about it. It takes basic math to succeed. All you need to do is learn to multiply by .85.

There’s more to it than that, and congratulations that you have the talent to make it work for you, but accept as a basic premise that not everyone does.

And this sums up what you want. You want the same rewards from working the TP as someone who has put in the PERSONAL EFFORT to research prices on the TP. You are also asking the Dev’s to somehow predict the future FOR YOU through their TP interface.

Yes, that is what I said. The TP should not be an effective money engine, it should only exist to level out the RNG curve of drops, by allowing adventurers a place to find items that RNG did not provide them, and to offload items RNG provided that they do not want. The only money being made off the TP should be going to players who found the items in the first place.

4. I decided early on not to bother grinding out a Legendary. I didn’t wnt to farm the whole thing out. I chose not to do the backend work involved in Crafting a Legendary. I do not have a Legendary.

Neither do I. I’ve like one, I have most of the components necessary for one, but don’t have the gold needed to acquire the precursor or other gold-based elements of it.

You also dont understand how much work is needed to make the amount of gold you are jelly of off the TP.

Ok, then I’ll ask you two basic questions. 1. Do you spend more than two hours per day actively working on the TP? 2. Do you average more than 5g earned per day? If so, we have a problem, because I spend more than two hours per day playing the actual game, and I tend to average well less than 5g per day in doing so. I’m not saying that the TP is easy or effortless, I’m saying that it rewards unequally for the effort put in, that the other ingame activities do not reward nearly as much for equal amounts of time and effort.

Ohoni.6057:

Bind on Purchase. Done.

Catastrophic failure of carefully constructed economy. Done.

Schizo.1375:

Wrong. No one needs ascended gear. Exotic is the only lvl 80 gear that anyone every needs. If you compare the stats between exotic and ascended the difference is so insignificant that character build and play skill are more deciding factors. Ascended gear is just a end game goal for people who like those sorts of things. Its meant to be the best level in name only, a goal to strive for. If you don’t want to get it don’t get it and you can still be better than those who do.

Does Ascended have better stats than Exotic, yes or no? (The answer is yes)
Does that mean Ascended is BiS, yes or no? (Again, the answer is yes)
Did a dev state that by level 80, everyone, and that includes casual players, should have BiS gear, yes or no? (Yet again, the answer is yes)

Your technicalities are meaningless. Ascended is BiS, end of story. It should be easily obtained by everyone.

Schizo.1375:

And your devaluoing of legendaries only proves my point.

I have devalued nothing. If work and effort are the defining characteristics for the value and prestige of Legendaries, then they currently have neither value nor prestige because all of the work and effort can be completely bypassed by using a credit card to get a Legendary off the TP.

If work and effort are to be defining characteristics for the value of an item, that item cannot be sellable on the TP, or gems bought with money cannot be turned into gold, because it renders the ideas of work and effort meaningless.

Ohoni.6057:

It isn’t about being “good” at playing the TP. It is about doing research and geting expirienced with it. I barely made it out of high school math with a passing grade but I can still turn a little profit of playing it from reading and learning about the TP. All this I did on my own by making the decision I would learn about it. It takes basic math to succeed. All you need to do is learn to multiply by .85.

There’s more to it than that, and congratulations that you have the talent to make it work for you, but accept as a basic premise that not everyone does.

And this sums up what you want. You want the same rewards from working the TP as someone who has put in the PERSONAL EFFORT to research prices on the TP. You are also asking the Dev’s to somehow predict the future FOR YOU through their TP interface.

Yes, that is what I said. The TP should not be an effective money engine, it should only exist to level out the RNG curve of drops, by allowing adventurers a place to find items that RNG did not provide them, and to offload items RNG provided that they do not want. The only money being made off the TP should be going to players who found the items in the first place.

You also dont understand how much work is needed to make the amount of gold you are jelly of off the TP.

Ok, then I’ll ask you two basic questions. 1. Do you spend more than two hours per day actively working on the TP? 2. Do you average more than 5g earned per day? If so, we have a problem, because I spend more than two hours per day playing the actual game, and I tend to average well less than 5g per day in doing so. I’m not saying that the TP is easy or effortless, I’m saying that it rewards unequally for the effort put in, that the other ingame activities do not reward nearly as much for equal amounts of time and effort.

The answer to your first question is no, that would be boring. The answer to your second question is a little more complex. I can flip items and make more than 5 gold for 2 hours investment, but I would rather speed run AC p1-3 for an equal amount of gold but less time invested. Working the TP involves patience and the willingness to suspend your desire for instant gratification. For example, I sold out of my cheap elonian leathers when the spinal blades came out because the price spiked. I then rebought the amount I needed a while later at a much cheaper price.

The Problem you have is that you keep saying you can’t do something. I am saying that playing the TP is like everything else in life. If you apply yourself you can figure out how to make gold off it. But you may not be as good as the next person, such is life. Learn it now and you may be a little more prepared for real life.

You should also consider that your lack of knowledge on this subject may preclude you from making suggestions anyone will take seriously.

Im done unless you can come up with something that doesnt boil down to “I cant do this because someone else will be better than me so nerf plz”