Guild Wars 2

Many MMO’s have broken markets. The most common case, is where there are simply too few transactions happening. This makes it a waste of time to check if anything is at sale at the marketplace, so people don’t bother. Instead, everyone spams offers and requests in global chat. This is the usual MMO scenario of the stagnant village market.

The GW2 market is not like that, it’s a global market bustling with activity 24/7, but it’s broken nonetheless.

The problem is, all prices are permanently depressed to levels where no in-game economic activity really makes much sense as a source of income.

Out of all MMO’s I’ve played, I can’t remember a single one where I was so hopelessly flat-out broke all the time. Even minor gold sinks like travel costs are a substantial barrier to use in GW2. The GW2 player basically lives off vendor trashing junk drops, and quick travel is a luxury that must be used in moderation.

At least until he or she discovers how to make money at the trade post.

It seems strange that it should be possible to make money trading this depressed market, where practically every item in the game is permanently on offer, often at near vendor trash values. But it is. There are certain safe trades that never fail to churn a handsome profit.

I’m not an expert here, nor need I be, since once you find one such trade, you’re pretty much set…

My trade is to place bulk buy orders for “Bag of Skritt Shinies” (buy price has ranged from 79 to 121 c for me). I then open the bags and post sell orders for the contents (sell price has ranged from 135 to 183 c, averaged over 1000 bags).

That’s it. The trade never fails, so no complicated math is needed, just buy and sell, and make as much money as you can be bothered to open bags. At least while you’re still leveling up, this is vastly more profitable than anything else you can do in the game!

Unfortunately, this makes a lot of in-game activity pointless. Why mine ore (which breaks ever more expensive mining picks and barely breaks even), when you can make a solid profit just by buying Skritt bags?

Now, we all know from basic economic theory that what I just told you can’t be – it is impossible for a free market to have an excessively profitable trade for any length of time. If such a “golden trade” existed, more and more market actors would be attracted to it, undercutting each other to get the action, until the situation stabilizes at a moderately profitable level, just as any other trade.

But persistent golden trades still exist in GW2!

Why is this? I don’t claim to know, but I do have a theory that might be worth consideration. It goes like this:

In my theory, ArenaNet was originally concerned that the market would be unstable, so they put in some “fudge logic” to keep everything running smoothly. Specifically, I theorize that if there is great demand for an item, and the supply generated by players cannot keep up, then the trade system fills some buy orders with items freshly created from thin air. All in an attempt to help, of course.

If this theory is true, then it has a few serious consequences that ArenaNet may not have considered. The market will indeed run more smoothly, but at a cost:

One is that prices will be permanently suppressed, since excess demand cannot raise prices, but excess supply can still lower them. This hurts in-game economic activity across the board, just as we are seeing.

Another is that golden trade opportunities will exist, since excess demand cannot raise prices, so there is no mechanism that restores the balance when more actors pile on to get a cut of the hot action.

In the end, this skews the functioning of the market and destroys the game economy by diverting resources from productive players who are out there mining resources, to non-productive players like myself who are double-clicking tens of thousands of bags like drooling idiots!

This is not a good thing for the game, and it should be fixed.

P.S.
The reason I believe my theory is correct, is because the demand for Skritt bags is huge (for obvious reasons), and yet the buy orders keep getting filled! It seems the more Skritt bags people want to buy, the more Skritt bags are flooding the market. The end result of more actors piling on to profit is that everyone gets as many bags as they wish for, at a rate that actually depresses the price to ridiculous levels, once no-one around can take any more bags.

When you put out a buy order for say 4000 Skritt bags, you’ll see 1 or 2 bags dripping in every five minutes, and then perhaps 1750 bags drop at once. It seems logical to assume the 1 or 2 bags are bags actually sold by players, while the 1750 bags are bags created by the trading system to fill orders in a market where supply cannot meet demand, as my theory goes. The ratio of fake bags to real bags is 1000 to 1 in that case.

Just imagine what this then does to the market value of the mats contained in those bags!

The message to take home: market intervention is always bad, both in the real world, and in a game economy! Just don’t do it! Let supply and demand balance out itself! Wherever the price ends up is the right price!

Please fix this, ArenaNet. When you do, parasitical market actors like myself will become less wealthy, but everyone will enjoy the game more, me included. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

The market is only broken for two reasons:

1) You don’t understand it
2) See #1.

Good job, you found a market that hasn’t fully reached equilibrium yet.

Take advantage while you can. As more people learn about this, the prices will slowly reach equilibrium.

There’s a ton of markets that are like this. No, Anet isn’t doing anything, players are just silly and don’t realize things.

Also buy orders =/= demand. John Smith should really make a sticky with this fact.

@Ursan:

It’s of course possible this is just a case of people behaving sub-optimally. That’s why I call my theory a theory.

But if ArenaNet isn’t intervening in the markets to stabilize them, then the following conundrum needs explaining:

Most of the time there are few Skritt bags entering the market to fill buy orders. Then suddenly, huge amounts of Skritt bags drop into the market, all at the same time.

A player playing in Skritt territory for some time might accumulate 10 bags, decide he can’t be bothered to open them, and dump them at the trade post, filling a buy order. But under what circumstances might a player conceivably dump thousands of bag at the same time?

Actually, there is no possible way for him to do it in a way that matches the evidence, because thousands of bags can enter the market faster than a player could dump them there (you can only sell max 250 at a time).

No, there are only two possible explanations, as far as I can see:

1. ArenaNet “helps” the market, as in my theory.

2. The trade post is not hosted on a single server, and a bunch of partly inconsistent trade post servers work in parallel, without being aware of what happens on the others. When they get the time to update what has happened on the other servers, big update changes can occur at once.

The second more technical explanation is of course possible, but it would mean the market-as-you-see-it is always in an inconsistent state by design. This would be a dangerous way to implement a market system, perhaps acceptable in a game, but disastrous for a real market system. If that’s the case we’ll probably just have to live with the strange things that happen as a result, since it would take a complete re-implementation to fix it.

Imo the op is trying to drive the mentioned product’s price up, since he is stocked on it, so that he could dump his supply after “omg how to manipulate market,plz” auditory from this forum swarms the fore mentioned product with buy offers. Nice try.

Mike.7236:

A player playing in Skritt territory for some time might accumulate 10 bags, decide he can’t be bothered to open them, and dump them at the trade post, filling a buy order. But under what circumstances might a player conceivably dump thousands of bag at the same time?

How big is your time scale of “same time?” Do you seriously watch the tp all day an see 1000 pop up at once?

Also is it really inconceivable to you that in a game of 3 million players, these things happen sometimes? That maybe 2-3, even 10-20 players dump large amounts of skritt bags?

Occam’s razor.

Imo the op is trying to drive the mentioned product’s price up, since he is stocked on it, so that he could dump his supply after “omg how to manipulate market,plz” auditory from this forum swarms the fore mentioned product with buy offers. Nice try.

Possible, but I’ve seen conspiracy theorist believe in some craaazy things. I can believe that the OP really believes in his “theory.”

Ursan.7846:

Possible, but I’ve seen conspiracy theorist believe in some craaazy things. I can believe that the OP really believes in his “theory.”

Did you know that if you’re religious, RNG favors you? That’s my theory anyways.

Maylojager.1307:

Imo the op is trying to drive the mentioned product’s price up, since he is stocked on it, so that he could dump his supply after “omg how to manipulate market,plz” auditory from this forum swarms the fore mentioned product with buy offers. Nice try.

Nah, I used to worry when I saw other crowding in to take advantage of this market, now I just put my buy order where I want it, no matter if there are buy orders for 10000 bags above me. It doesn’t seem to matter how many others I’m competing with, my buy order will still be filled soon enough. It’s this strange market behavior that made me wonder about the whole thing.

Ursan.7846:

Mike.7236:

A player playing in Skritt territory for some time might accumulate 10 bags, decide he can’t be bothered to open them, and dump them at the trade post, filling a buy order. But under what circumstances might a player conceivably dump thousands of bag at the same time?

How big is your time scale of “same time?” Do you seriously watch the tp all day an see 1000 pop up at once?

Also is it really inconceivable to you that in a game of 3 million players, these things happen sometimes? That maybe 2-3, even 10-20 players dump large amounts of skritt bags?

Occam’s razor.

No, I certainly do not watch the “Skritt Bag of Shinies” market all day. But I do watch it closely for perhaps twenty minutes from time to time, since I’m busy making money on it! My main is at level 61, and I already got about 100 g for my lvl 80 gear…

And when I do keep close track on this market, second by second, I see exactly what I reported to you all: a very slow drip of bags entering the market, interspersed with HUGE loads of bags dumped in the very same second.

So far you have insinuated I’m a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting the trade post software is fudging stuff, which may turn out to be wrong, but you have not provided an alternative explanation worth considering. I’m all ears.

The huge loads of bags outnumber the drip of bags at least 100 to 1. If players are responsible for the huge dumps, then they must have bought them earlier. Which means 99 % of bags are bought and then resold without being opened. Which further means, all my buying competitors in this markets are reselling, and I’m the only one opening them to take out the profit contained within.

Is this a reasonable explanation?

You say you’re watching the market of Skritt Bag of Shinies. So before I go on and debunk your conspiracy, allow me to get more details from you.

Where are you getting these numbers of 1750 bags dropping at once? Are you purchasing 2000 of these bags, and seeing it trickle in for pickup?

The alternative is easy. Like I mentioned, the player base is huge.

There’s many reasons for why your orders vary that much.

1. You place an order for 60c. Someone places 99 orders at 61 c. Someone sells 100 bags. You receive just one.
2. You place an order for 60c. Someone just happens to sell 100 bags immediately after. You receive 100 bags.
3. Some people don’t farm skritt bags heavily, and sell 1 by 1. But some people do farm them heavily, and some of them dump them en mass.
4. Or, just tons of people sell a few skritt bags at the same time.

Again, congrats on finding a profitable market. Once knowledge gets out however, they tend to not stay profitable. Enjoy it while you can.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You say you’re watching the market of Skritt Bag of Shinies. So before I go on and debunk your conspiracy, allow me to get more details from you.

Where are you getting these numbers of 1750 bags dropping at once? Are you purchasing 2000 of these bags, and seeing it trickle in for pickup?

Please “debunk” it if you can, I’m only interested in learning the truth.

This is what happens, in detail:

I’m putting in buy orders for several thousand bags at a time, for instance 3000 or so. And as I’m busy doing so (I may still be busy putting out more buy orders), the pickup button lights up, I check it, and voíla, there are 750, 125, or 1750 bags for immediate pickup!

I start unpacking the mats within, and while I’m busy doing so, a single bag drops, the three more a minute later. And then suddenly, all my remaining orders are filled. I put out more buy orders and keep unpacking. Soon I have to stop putting out more buy orders, because they are filling faster than i can unpack them. Always in huge loads.

Then I sell the mats. The least profit I’ve ever seen has been 25 %. The highest 90 %.

The TP being the way it is, maybe the few that trickle in are coming from your own server while the huge load that gets dumped out occasionally is the sum of all bags bought from different servers?

Arimahn.3568:

The TP being the way it is, maybe the few that trickle in are coming from your own server while the huge load that gets dumped out occasionally is the sum of all bags bought from different servers?

This makes no sense. The TP is global, period.

the pickup button lights up, I check it, and voíla, there are 750, 125, or 1750 bags for immediate pickup!

You should post screenshots of your pickup tab. Before you press Take All, not after it.

Ursan.7846:

Arimahn.3568:

The TP being the way it is, maybe the few that trickle in are coming from your own server while the huge load that gets dumped out occasionally is the sum of all bags bought from different servers?

This makes no sense. The TP is global, period.

The TP, technically, is a mess and the items that get traded are still attached to characters on different servers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it can’t account for the steady stream of bought items from elsewhere on a specific account. So, instead of making a huge list of tiny stacks it wraps them up in larger bundles and only then sends them to the buyer.

Ursan.7846:

The alternative is easy. Like I mentioned, the player base is huge.

There’s many reasons for why your orders vary that much.

1. You place an order for 60c. Someone places 99 orders at 61 c. Someone sells 100 bags. You receive just one.
2. You place an order for 60c. Someone just happens to sell 100 bags immediately after. You receive 100 bags.
3. Some people don’t farm skritt bags heavily, and sell 1 by 1. But some people do farm them heavily, and some of them dump them en mass.
4. Or, just tons of people sell a few skritt bags at the same time.

Again, congrats on finding a profitable market. Once knowledge gets out however, they tend to not stay profitable. Enjoy it while you can.

You’re basically saying the market is so huge this kitten just happens?

I won’t argue against the idea. Perhaps that’s the plain truth…

If that’s so, then I guess I’ll just have to keep milking this market niche until it dries up, and then go on to find another gold mine.

It’s still a bit sad though. I mean, the fact remains you make very little gold from actually playing the game, and milking the trade post isn’t as much fun. :-(

Arimahn.3568:

The TP, technically, is a mess

I’m shocked at your knowledge of how the back-end of the TP works. Please tell me where you learned this wonderful knowledge.

Mike.7236:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You say you’re watching the market of Skritt Bag of Shinies. So before I go on and debunk your conspiracy, allow me to get more details from you.

Where are you getting these numbers of 1750 bags dropping at once? Are you purchasing 2000 of these bags, and seeing it trickle in for pickup?

Please “debunk” it if you can, I’m only interested in learning the truth.

This is what happens, in detail:

I’m putting in buy orders for several thousand bags at a time, for instance 3000 or so. And as I’m busy doing so (I may still be busy putting out more buy orders), the pickup button lights up, I check it, and voíla, there are 750, 125, or 1750 bags for immediate pickup!

I start unpacking the mats within, and while I’m busy doing so, a single bag drops, the three more a minute later. And then suddenly, all my remaining orders are filled. I put out more buy orders and keep unpacking. Soon I have to stop putting out more buy orders, because they are filling faster than i can unpack them. Always in huge loads.

Then I sell the mats. The least profit I’ve ever seen has been 25 %. The highest 90 %.

Ursan already made a good post, but I’ll add to it.

Game has millions of players spread across multiple servers. The Trading Post is game wide, thus technically, millions of players have access to it. Out of those millions of players, there may be 3 for 4 who have stacks of the item available for your Buy Order. It takes only seconds to sell, and then perhaps a slight lag to deliver them to your account for pickup.

Conspiracy busted.

From constantly getting errors when placing items on the market too fast, for example. If you didn’t notice how incredibly slow and awful the entire thing is I don’t know what to tell you.

Arimahn.3568:

Ursan.7846:

Arimahn.3568:

The TP being the way it is, maybe the few that trickle in are coming from your own server while the huge load that gets dumped out occasionally is the sum of all bags bought from different servers?

This makes no sense. The TP is global, period.

The TP, technically, is a mess and the items that get traded are still attached to characters on different servers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it can’t account for the steady stream of bought items from elsewhere on a specific account. So, instead of making a huge list of tiny stacks it wraps them up in larger bundles and only then sends them to the buyer.

That’s also a possible explanation. But it would imply the market is in an inconsistent state (because ther IS no consistent global state), with lots of fudging going on behind the scene to make the numbers seem to work out. If that’s true, then the TP is most definitely a mess technically.

Ursan.7846:

You should post screenshots of your pickup tab. Before you press Take All, not after it.

Perhaps I should. But I have 4500 bags waiting to be unpacked as it is, and more gold than I’ll need until level cap, so I might not make any more buys anytime soon.

Arimahn.3568:

From constantly getting errors when placing items on the market too fast, for example. If you didn’t notice how incredibly slow and awful the entire thing is I don’t know what to tell you.

You’re making quite a big leap of logic there.

1. You get errors when you sell too fast.
2. You decide the entire code is a mess?
3. Somehow commerce through different servers is treated differently?

Er, well. I guess I can’t really disprove you, though I will say I find the leaps of logic quite silly.

Mike.7236:

Perhaps I should. But I have 4500 bags waiting to be unpacked as it is, and more gold than I’ll need until level cap, so I might not make any more buys anytime soon.

You know what they say. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have the burden of proof. We don’t.

Ursan.7846:

Mike.7236:

Perhaps I should. But I have 4500 bags waiting to be unpacked as it is, and more gold than I’ll need until level cap, so I might not make any more buys anytime soon.

You know what they say. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have the burden of proof. We don’t.

I just popped into the game and checked. “Bag of Skritt Shinies” currently has a buy order price of 96 c. Can’t you just pop in and buy 2000 bags at 97 c, and see for yourself? You’ll make 30 % profit or more for the effort too! ;-)

Someone ordered 10000 bags for a few c less. I guarantee you he will get them, probably quite soon. That’s how this market works.

Ursan.7846:

You’re making quite a big leap of logic there.

We are talking about devs who can’t raise the bleed cap due to “bandwidth”. I wasn’t making a definite statement here, I just pointing out that some form of server-client shenanigan could be in place that makes items appear in huge stacks.

Ursan.7846:

Good job, you found a market that hasn’t fully reached equilibrium yet.

Take advantage while you can. As more people learn about this, the prices will slowly reach equilibrium.

There’s a ton of markets that are like this. No, Anet isn’t doing anything, players are just silly and don’t realize things.

NO DON’T TELL THEM UGHHHHH

Mike.7236:

@Ursan:

Most of the time there are few Skritt bags entering the market to fill buy orders. Then suddenly, huge amounts of Skritt bags drop into the market, all at the same time.

A player playing in Skritt territory for some time might accumulate 10 bags, decide he can’t be bothered to open them, and dump them at the trade post, filling a buy order. But under what circumstances might a player conceivably dump thousands of bag at the same time?

Wasn’t going to mention this- I don’t know about a single player dumping thousands of bags at once, nor about the limit of only 250 sales at a time, but the very obvious solution is, as was mentioned, that players are simply taking advantage of a market not in equilibrium. Player buys something at a price slightly higher than the current highest buying price, then they sell it slightly lower than they current lowest selling price. I’ve done this before, and, with some markets, it works fantastically. Buy 100 of an item, and then sell it back off to make a few silver or whatnot.

There’s also one other solution that I think people are missing out on. That would be that ANet is basically injecting money in the form of supply into the economy in order to
1. Control high inflation
2. Control heavy supply shocks
or
3. Bring the economy out of a depression

All three are very possible. Simply looking at the aggregate supply/demand curves, if supply shifts to the right, then price level will decrease, and production will return to long-run equilibrium. This means deflation, as well as policy to keep the economy in check. Of course, they can’t just do this willy-nilly, otherwise people who have their money invested in large amounts of materials, for example, would suddenly find themselves with half the gold that they had had beforehand. It also means that the economy- given that it is experiencing stunted economic output- will return to its long-run equilibrium state at the LRAS.

These are all very valid reasons why ANet could be injecting money in the form of supply into the economy that does not break the market.

I agree with the OP.

From the moment I started playing this game I realised that the ‘economy’ wasn’t following normal behaviour for a real-world market.

After all, it’s a game. There are no actual market forces involved. Materials and cash are not immutable objects as they are in RL. Those mobs don’t actually walk around with their pockets jangling and sporting the latest designer armour. The loot is created on the spot when you kill the mob. When you sell it to a vendor, it gets destroyed.

Similarly, those ‘moldy bags’ don’t actually contain anything until the moment you open it. If you sell it on the market, the recipient doesn’t get the same bag with the same contents. He gets a whole new lucky dip. It would be easy to ‘flag’ it to give better loot.

You can’t apply economic theory to this system. If the Devs want ppl to ‘play the market’ as part of the game, they will manipulate it to that end. I’m sure they do. Ppl love to gamble and especially love to win a gamble. It costs nothing to make them happy.

So, If you want to get rich, keep looking for those profit margins.

Contiguous.1345:

I agree with the OP.

From the moment I started playing this game I realised that the ‘economy’ wasn’t following normal behaviour for a real-world market.

After all, it’s a game. There are no actual market forces involved. Materials and cash are not immutable objects as they are in RL. Those mobs don’t actually walk around with their pockets jangling and sporting the latest designer armour. The loot is created on the spot when you kill the mob. When you sell it to a vendor, it gets destroyed.

Similarly, those ‘moldy bags’ don’t actually contain anything until the moment you open it. If you sell it on the market, the recipient doesn’t get the same bag with the same contents. He gets a whole new lucky dip. It would be easy to ‘flag’ it to give better loot.

You can’t apply economic theory to this system. If the Devs want ppl to ‘play the market’ as part of the game, they will manipulate it to that end. I’m sure they do. Ppl love to gamble and especially love to win a gamble. It costs nothing to make them happy.

So, If you want to get rich, keep looking for those profit margins.

Uh.

So what you’re saying is, because materials are being created/destroyed virtually, basic economic principles like supply and demand don’t work in this economy?

Do you want to explain? You’re making quite the huge leap in logic.

The rule of supply and demand is only affected by what supply is in the market and not how much a particular item is currently in the game world. It doesn’t make one iota of difference if the entire player base is sitting on one or a billion of some item in inventory. If the market only has 10 for sale and 1000 orders for it, the price will likely be higher than if those two numbers were reversed.

There isn’t necessarily a scarcity of supply in the world (beyond the % on the drop tables) that affect the price, it’s the scarcity of it at the TP. If the item isn’t valued by the players due to it’s stats or it’s required in a popular crafting recipe it makes no difference if it’s scarce or not.

I lolled so hard with this thread.
1/ OP makes up a completely implausible theory
2/ OP believes A.net didn’t think of the consequences of things they did not implement
3/ OP uses this fake theory to pump the price of his junk since “it always works”

I feel sorry for the people who believed him. Sure your 4000 bag buy order will be filled, but not by A.net. It will be filled by the OP (who will use that as “evidence” for his nonsense)

A.net lock this thread already.

I really do not think that the OP created this thread discussion for his own agenda to drive up market prices with the community and coerce curious and naive players to go farm the market in an effort to debunk his theory. In fact, all I see is negative striking from forum trolls against his fairly educated and plausible theory around a potentially skewed and assisted program implemented by development.

On the contrary it seems the rock throwers actually have their own agenda. Which is, to keep this on the hush so this kind of money making information isn’t leaked out for others to utilize, potentially wrecking any profitable “zero effort” method to make money off the trade post. And please, for the sake of everyone at least learn English before posting anything at all of your opinion. Some of you, within the posts above give me a serious headache.

Fact is, all the trolls have yet to even bother testing what has been said by the OP. It doesn’t seem likely he would put himself out on a forum thread potentially getting himself in trouble for an exploit or misinforming the community with false information in order to drive an agenda for sales. So until you put forth more effort than just bashing his logic, like he is completely stupid, why not put forth actual action to disprove his entire theory? Oh, right. You’re lazy trolls.

I think that the idea of supply and demand in this game, from the get go is completely off its kilter to begin with. This game, unlike other MMO’s where resources remain equal to all players. There is no competition for any resource node in the game. Unless you want to account for mobs that may kill you before you can get to a resource and collect it prior to a server reset. Then the market available for selling said resources is a Global linked system across all servers? So servers less populated or more, perhaps where people don’t bother much at all with collecting resources all fall under a global market anyway?

To me that segment and fact alters supply and demand from the start. And what exactly are most of those items used to craft or make that is subsequently of any relative value to most players? Nothing. Unless they are leveling a crafting profession. Which there isn’t any money to be made in at all. The cost of making items is so close to higher cost, it’s almost pointless. Nothing at all in crafting makes any material really sought after in order to make anything unique to crafting. You can buy the same gear for absolutely free and often times, the most sought after stats on gear isn’t even craft-able at all. All players have the ability to obtain top level gear just by playing (IE) Karma, Dungeons, Laurels. So all resources are all already kitten

Perhaps the most relative and useful material for anything in the game at all is Cooking. That allows players to potentially get a buff to get more effective and increase their odds at over gains within the game. Still, it certainly isn’t like going all in before the flop and getting lucky with a Royal Flush.

And with that, these Shiny bags may not be acquired exactly the same for every player. As loot is determined on a system of pure luck of the draw across the game. A player with potentially 0 magic find bonus may actually receive a precursor they can sell for hundreds of gold, where as someone with 250% magic find may not get anything but a piece of trash. It’s all a giant gamble built into the game. And alas, the guy with the magic find will eventually get his item or one similar enough to sell and buy another. That is if he has the patience to keep trying. The only thing you can control is to increase your odds of potential loot, gathering “extended” amounts of resources and increase critical chance in production of crafting items, basically worth nothing to the value of said materials. All this is contributed and based on your worlds bonuses influenced by who is winning world vs world.

I can’t see where anywhere in this game, anything is at all of much value period. Unless Sir Farms A Lot does continue to get ridiculously lucky farming and collects serveral rare precursors a day. But what is the value of that determined by? Supply and Demand? No, people do not even have the gold to buy them. That is why most sit on the trade post not selling. Crafting certainly does not provide any uniqueness either. The trade post allows people to buy things for less than vendor value, yet you can’t sell it below that benchmark. The few players after Legendary weapons, collectively achieve that relatively easily with dedication of time. Each component resource used in its creation after obtaining the precursor is absolutely achievable. Not to mention that in large part the materials to make those items, are solely account based and takes actual game play in order to obtain.

Continued…

…

Even though millions of people are playing this game, I find it hard to imagine, if he purchases several thousand bags at a time how it is at all possible based on a gambling loot system, you all can justify an opposing point that orders are filled that quickly. I don’t see it happening overall between 3 million players, within every hour thousands of Skritt bags are looted and then sold on the trade post? Why would they even bother. You can open them up and sell the contents more effectively for more. You are essentially saying millions of players are really that stupid?

You are all saying, to disprove Mike’s entire post that he has the numbers wrong and that there is an actual demand for that many resources being sold, every hour across millions of players who are actually making items in game, which players “must have” and their able to sell these crafted items to then purchase more materials? I think you all need to rethink what you’ve said on that. I think the leap of logic is on your behalf, not Mikes. His theory is plausible, your objections are ludicrous.

I’d give you the benefit of the doubt if Skritt bags drop ratio was 1 in 5 Skritt that will produce a bag, with a baseline of no buff at all. But that is relatively impossible to even test, as every server based on what I stated above will vary. I just don’t see the math being probable regardless of millions of players in game farming. If that were the case, there would never be a zero market available for bags or the materials produced from them either. If that were the case, wouldn’t we be seeing thousands of crafted items available as well? These items being so sought after they can also contribute in balancing those purchases for more resources to craft them? I don’t think so.

This just in: the market in GW2 is not actually efficient.

Shocking, I know.

Ensign.2189:

This just in: the market in GW2 is not actually efficient.

Shocking, I know.

I won’t say “not efficient.” I think the better term is “not perfectly efficient.”

@Vancien

It sounds like you are more upset that other players don’t play the game the way you do, your rant on opening Skritt bags for instance, and the inherent unfairness of the RNG.

Do you get angry when you see in map chat someone bragging they got an exotic from a dragon chest while you only got a run of the mill rare? Do you identify unidentified dyes hoping to get a rare, one of the half a dozen masterwork or one of the two fine dyes that are worth more than simply selling it a the TP? Do you play the lottery every week but get upset because you don’t win? Because that’s what you are complaining about. Random chance not being in your favor. It’s never in your favor. You might be able to improve the odds but it’s still not a certainty. If you accept that and treat a favorable roll as a happy surprise out of the ordinary rather than treat an unfavorable roll as the game out to get you, you’ll enjoy the game more.

The system might bundle the different sales over a period of time into one, which would make perfect sense to me – unless you want a buy history 1000 pages long with the same item over and over. If Anet would fill your order themselves, they would have also filled sell orders and we would not have needed extra recipes to get rid of a gazillion butter.

There are things I don’t like about the presentation and functionality of the TP, but I don’t think there is a need for theories that border on conspiracy?

Ursan.7846:

I won’t say “not efficient.” I think the better term is “not perfectly efficient.”

I’m using the term ‘efficient’ in strict accordance with the efficient market hypothesis – and under that definition, the GW2 market is not even weakly efficient.

We could say that one market is more or less efficient than another, but without a basis for comparison we really can’t say anything beyond ‘the market is inefficient’. This, granted, isn’t saying much of anything, since no markets that I know of are efficient (except the ones in simplified micro models!)

It certainly isn’t anywhere near getting involved in the (quite interesting) paradoxical perfectly inefficient market discussion.

Mike.7236:

The problem is, all prices are permanently depressed to levels where no in-game economic activity really makes much sense as a source of income.

I tried to follow you but I couldn’t help but coming back to this original statement. It’s simply not true. The context of my claim is simple … I decided for the first time since the game has started that I would try to flip some things. It worked. Not only did it work over a very short buy/sell period (2 days) but I increased my small amount of capital from 6G to 10G including some additional, valuable mats I hung on to. Is my singular experience relevant to the general population? Probably not, but should it be? Does the economy NEED to make everyone easy money to not be broken? I don’t think so.

My point: if the economy is fundamentally broken, then it should probably stay that way. If someone like me can make money working it on a low capital, short term flip exercise, I can only imagine what a more dedicated effort would yield.

Mike.7236:

Out of all MMO’s I’ve played, I can’t remember a single one where I was so hopelessly flat-out broke all the time. Even minor gold sinks like travel costs are a substantial barrier to use in GW2. The GW2 player basically lives off vendor trashing junk drops, and quick travel is a luxury that must be used in moderation.

I think I see what your problem is … did you actually gather anything and sell it? Just a simple run in ore and berries will give 20 silver.

Ursan.7846:

Contiguous.1345:

I agree with the OP.

From the moment I started playing this game I realised that the ‘economy’ wasn’t following normal behaviour for a real-world market.

After all, it’s a game. There are no actual market forces involved. Materials and cash are not immutable objects as they are in RL. Those mobs don’t actually walk around with their pockets jangling and sporting the latest designer armour. The loot is created on the spot when you kill the mob. When you sell it to a vendor, it gets destroyed.

Similarly, those ‘moldy bags’ don’t actually contain anything until the moment you open it. If you sell it on the market, the recipient doesn’t get the same bag with the same contents. He gets a whole new lucky dip. It would be easy to ‘flag’ it to give better loot.

You can’t apply economic theory to this system. If the Devs want ppl to ‘play the market’ as part of the game, they will manipulate it to that end. I’m sure they do. Ppl love to gamble and especially love to win a gamble. It costs nothing to make them happy.

So, If you want to get rich, keep looking for those profit margins.

Uh.

So what you’re saying is, because materials are being created/destroyed virtually, basic economic principles like supply and demand don’t work in this economy?

Do you want to explain? You’re making quite the huge leap in logic.

OK, I’ll explain in detail.

This game is a computer program. It’s designed to simulate many aspects of reality. One of those aspects is a ‘market’. Players are presented with the illusion of a trading system and allowed to buy/sell goods apparently to each other.

However, There is no reason for the programmers attempt a full reconstruction of a real market, where the goods bought and sold are actual material goods that can’t be created or destroyed without serious consequences. In fact, that would require a lot of effort to balance the flow of supply and demand so that the necessary in-game goods were available for players to progress their characters.

It’s a lot easier and requires far less code, to simply use a set of RNGs to determine the supply of goods and prices. If I were asked to do it I would simply insert dummy trades into the game in order to source/sink goods and keep available the items that players need while quietly removing junk.

The obvious signs of something like that would be for example, the ready sales of scrap items and bags that sell on the market consistently for more than their content value. Again, the fact that exotic armour, weapons and trinkets are always available at prices less than the cost of crafting. (Before someone objects that you get XP ‘profit’ from crafting, I’ll just add that it’s across the board – EVERYTHING you need is available – even if nobody in their right mind would craft it.)

I don’t want to spoil the game of course – but it IS a game. Smoke and mirrors. :-)

PS 20 years a programmer. lol!

Contiguous.1345:

OK, I’ll explain in detail.

This game is a computer program. It’s designed to simulate many aspects of reality. One of those aspects is a ‘market’. Players are presented with the illusion of a trading system and allowed to buy/sell goods apparently to each other.

However, There is no reason for the programmers attempt a full reconstruction of a real market, where the goods bought and sold are actual material goods that can’t be created or destroyed without serious consequences. In fact, that would require a lot of effort to balance the flow of supply and demand so that the necessary in-game goods were available for players to progress their characters.

It’s a lot easier and requires far less code, to simply use a set of RNGs to determine the supply of goods and prices. If I were asked to do it I would simply insert dummy trades into the game in order to source/sink goods and keep available the items that players need while quietly removing junk.

The obvious signs of something like that would be for example, the ready sales of scrap items and bags that sell on the market consistently for more than their content value. Again, the fact that exotic armour, weapons and trinkets are always available at prices less than the cost of crafting. (Before someone objects that you get XP ‘profit’ from crafting, I’ll just add that it’s across the board – EVERYTHING you need is available – even if nobody in their right mind would craft it.)

I don’t want to spoil the game of course – but it IS a game. Smoke and mirrors. :-)

PS 20 years a programmer. lol!

Yes, what you’re talking about would be easy to write / code. That being said, a process of ‘inserting dummy trades’ for market manipulation would in effect, create a gold faucet rather than allowing the TP to function as a sink via TP fees.

Reason: If supply is sourced by players, then consuming that supply via a ‘dummy trader bot’ would inject gold into the economy. Players are effectively selling their moldy bags etc to an npc. If you go the other way, and supply is provided by a ‘dummy trader bot’ and players buy from that source, you’re injecting goods into the economy at an artificial rate. While this might serve as an economic tool, it would be contrary to A-net’s goals of getting people out into the world to play…. they want people to realize that as scarcity of a raw material rises, going to the zones where it can be gathered becomes more rewarding.

The examples you use can be explained using observable market forces. I’m making some assumptions here because I don’t have the raw data, but I want to provide some notions that could explain what you’re seeing.

#1: Loot bags have a value relative to what they might contain. On a large enough transaction, one can argue that the price of 1,000 moldy bags is higher than the value of the contents of those bags. You would probably be right. The value of the bag, however, is that some of the contents may have value that exceeds the price of the bag. This appeals to a player segment that isn’t going to buy 1,000 moldy bags, they’re going to buy 10-20 and cross their fingers that they get what they need for a savings. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

#2: (I have absolutely no data for this, but if Mr. Smith would care to weigh in, I would be interested to know if I’m on track here.) I suspect that there are fewer loot bags moving through the trading post than there are of the items those loot bags produce. As an example, I would suggest that there are more t5 + t6 materials being traded than there are Heavy Moldy bags being traded. Because the supply is cycling much faster in the t5/t6 market, it has more frequent shifts susceptible to time of day, day of week, etc…. Meanwhile the volatility of the Heavy Moldy Bag market is lower, allowing for periods of opportunity where the Heavy Moldy Bag is priced significantly under many of the resultant mats, but also periods where the price of the Heavy Moldy Bag is a clear losing proposition.

Salvageable items have similar variable value, also remembering that their value will increase when salvages are required for daily / monthly achievement, and that supply of salvageable goods will not cycle as quickly as the resultant raw material making it slower to adapt to the market trend.

@CassieGold
What you say is perfectly true. But:-

The art of writing simulations is to only model what you absolutely need to cover and fudge the detail.
While it’s perfectly feasible to create a program that accurately tracks the supply and demand of real commodities and allows a market to function exactly as a real-world example, It isn’t necessary in a game and it would be an expensive overkill IMO. And I don’t think ArenaNet have done that.
Witness the fact that they just ‘upped’ the loot tables. I’ve seen a lot of speculation about what that might mean for this or that market – I suspect it will have no effect at all, It just makes people feel better.

One of the striking characteristics of the game is the ephemeral nature of the goods. They are created, have a brief life and are then deleted. The same applies to gold. This is characteristic of a program where the ‘objects’ are genuinely ephemeral and un-tracked. When you ‘buy’ something, the gold in your account is deleted and a new object (the item you bought) is created. The reverse applies when you sell.
It’s probable that no record is kept of the transaction and more importantly the action doesn’t impact on the ‘number of items in the market’ – that’s a variable with no significance. There is actually no flow through the market, just objects being created and deleted as required.
What determines the ‘requirement’ I couldn’t say.

I’m speculating of course, based on what I would do if asked to create a trading game. Maybe I’m wrong – it really doesn’t matter, but Occam’s razor makes me suspect a ‘con’.

Contiguous.1345:

OK, I’ll explain in detail.

This game is a computer program. It’s designed to simulate many aspects of reality. One of those aspects is a ‘market’. Players are presented with the illusion of a trading system and allowed to buy/sell goods apparently to each other.

…

It’s a lot easier and requires far less code, to simply use a set of RNGs to determine the supply of goods and prices. If I were asked to do it I would simply insert dummy trades into the game in order to source/sink goods and keep available the items that players need while quietly removing junk.

The obvious signs of something like that would be for example, the ready sales of scrap items and bags that sell on the market consistently for more than their content value. Again, the fact that exotic armour, weapons and trinkets are always available at prices less than the cost of crafting. (Before someone objects that you get XP ‘profit’ from crafting, I’ll just add that it’s across the board – EVERYTHING you need is available – even if nobody in their right mind would craft it.)

I don’t want to spoil the game of course – but it IS a game. Smoke and mirrors. :-)

PS 20 years a programmer. lol!

Amusing theory, but you’re mistaken and seem to have a poor understanding of market forces. Markets are not rational – people are, on the whole, really ‘dumb’ (irrational and easy to manipulate). I include myself in this statement, though being aware of certain sales tactics does help a person avoid being sucked in by them.

One of the most fundamental mistakes you can make about a market is to assume that its participants are rational beings.

If you put something on sale for 15% off, you’d expect people to be much more interested than if it were on sale for 9.97% off – but whoops, it turns out people take more notice of the 9.97% sale (due to overexposure — desensitization — to a common sale figure like 15%), and you end up both having a better margin and selling more product. And then you try putting some designer clothes on sale for 9.97% – and sales plummet for that item because a fashion-centric mindset despises ‘sale’ items as cheap or out-of-vogue. So you increase the sticker price of those clothes by 15% over the base price and you get more sales than you originally did!

Those are real-world examples, where something of much greater value than virtual gold is exchanged – i.e. physical cash or virtual money paid through a card or check (sidenote, people are generally much less willing to spend money when using cash as opposed to check, and check as opposed to card). If people are irrational with the item of basest value in their life (money), imagine how terrible gamers are with the essentially value-less gold that they have.

When it comes to individuals playing a game, the time-value of money is all but forgotten. Instead of investing in a long sale, players offload their items for below the ‘true’ market value of the item. Instead of putting in a buy order at a much lesser price, players are willing to pay inflated prices to get things now. Instead of being rational and investing their money in slow-but-certain gains, they’ll gamble on containers because they just might get lucky (combine that with my previous point and you have people wanting to gamble right now, leading to containers sometimes selling for more than they’re worth).

So where does all of this irrationality leave us? With no indication whatsoever that there is any TP-gaming code in the game. In fact, with my >10k purchases and >6k sales (according to the log) over just the past three weeks, I’d argue that there is almost definitively no TP-gaming code in the game. You mention that you think ‘needed’ goods will be kept at a reasonable price for players – having intentionally forced hundreds of those ‘needed’ goods from 5% above vendor price to over 600% above vendor price, and kept them that way for weeks while raking in money, I strongly disagree.

Source: 12 years a programmer. lol! It doesn’t matter for this topic.

Real source: father is a very respected ORMS professor and has been a business forecast consultant for Fortune 500 companies (Guidant/Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Best Buy, 3M, IBM, etc.) since before I was born. He’s taught me about forecasting, economics, management, and market forces since before I could walk, no matter how often I told him I wasn’t interested… and he got me interested as a result.

Contiguous.1345:

@CassieGold

Witness the fact that they just ‘upped’ the loot tables. I’ve seen a lot of speculation about what that might mean for this or that market – I suspect it will have no effect at all, It just makes people feel better.

…

I’m speculating of course, based on what I would do if asked to create a trading game. Maybe I’m wrong – it really doesn’t matter, but Occam’s razor makes me suspect a ‘con’.

Ecto prices have dropped by approx. 24% since the patch (1 day avg. 3665.90c/ea on Feb. 24; 1 day avg. 2787.24c/ea on March 6), but are stabilizing. Most rares have dropped in the range of 10-50+%, but are still volatile.

The trend for Ectos is a small negative slope, and I expect them to stabilize at about or slightly above 2750c/ea. Ignoring future changes that affect Ecto supply/demand, I see no reason that this new price point would change significantly beyond normal trade fluctuation.

For reference, Ectos previously had a stable price point at around 3900c from Feb. 2 to ~Feb. 18, when news of improved drop rates for Rares created a rush to sell. The real trauma hit on Feb. 27-28 (the 2 days after the patch; note that the patch was late on Feb. 26, so Feb. 27 was the first full day for people to experience the new drop rates), when there was a so-far-permanent drop of 500c/ea.

Re: Occam’s Razor — you misunderstand the concept. Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate: “Plurality must never be posited without necessity”. Reasoned explanations – i.e. those with both evidence and simplicity – may be accepted for the sake of practice despite possible inaccuracies in the absence of necessity. However, when multiple reasoned explanations exist, it is a necessity to examine the plurality and obtain more evidence until it can be reasoned that a single explanation may be accepted for the sake of practical action. This is, of course, situation dependent: sometimes you need very high accuracy and must examine all theories extensively (e.g. launching a rocket to the moon); others, you need to act quickly on one theory, even at the cost of accuracy (e.g. time-sensitive military operations).

Occam’s Razor is not a proof, and does not lend weight to an argument. It lends weight to the practical acceptance (not truth) of a theory with evidence against theories without evidence (theories that do not necessitate examination).

Contiguous.1345:

@CassieGold
What you say is perfectly true. But:-

The art of writing simulations is to only model what you absolutely need to cover and fudge the detail.
While it’s perfectly feasible to create a program that accurately tracks the supply and demand of real commodities and allows a market to function exactly as a real-world example, It isn’t necessary in a game and it would be an expensive overkill IMO. And I don’t think ArenaNet have done that.
Witness the fact that they just ‘upped’ the loot tables. I’ve seen a lot of speculation about what that might mean for this or that market – I suspect it will have no effect at all, It just makes people feel better.

One of the striking characteristics of the game is the ephemeral nature of the goods. They are created, have a brief life and are then deleted. The same applies to gold. This is characteristic of a program where the ‘objects’ are genuinely ephemeral and un-tracked. When you ‘buy’ something, the gold in your account is deleted and a new object (the item you bought) is created. The reverse applies when you sell.
It’s probable that no record is kept of the transaction and more importantly the action doesn’t impact on the ‘number of items in the market’ – that’s a variable with no significance. There is actually no flow through the market, just objects being created and deleted as required.
What determines the ‘requirement’ I couldn’t say.

I’m speculating of course, based on what I would do if asked to create a trading game. Maybe I’m wrong – it really doesn’t matter, but Occam’s razor makes me suspect a ‘con’.

Let me give you a more programming based reason why you don’t do this:

Item duping (exploiting game code to replicate items) has been an exploit in many MMOs and other online games. Many games can trace item duping because each item created in the game has an item identifier associated with the item. It’s not visible to the player, but is a unique ID associated with the item. If multiple items exist with the same unique ID, a clear problem can be discovered.

If the market were destroying and creating items ad-hoc, it would expose a vulnerability that could be exploited to force more items to be created.

Simpler explaination: It’s easier to track Unique Item IDs and transfer which target they’re assigned to (Player A, TP selling area, Player than it is to destroy an item when assigned to the TP, and re-create that item when it sells.

Note: my programming knowledge is limited to scripting languages and web / database back ends. I’m an admin, not a developer.

Edit: Akaji, I love your explaination of Occam’s razor and will remove any referant to it from my own posting, you’ve covered it far better!

Akaji.1296:

Contiguous.1345:

@CassieGold

Witness the fact that they just ‘upped’ the loot tables. I’ve seen a lot of speculation about what that might mean for this or that market – I suspect it will have no effect at all, It just makes people feel better.

…

I’m speculating of course, based on what I would do if asked to create a trading game. Maybe I’m wrong – it really doesn’t matter, but Occam’s razor makes me suspect a ‘con’.

Ecto prices have dropped by approx. 24% since the patch (1 day avg. 3665.90c/ea on Feb. 24; 1 day avg. 2787.24c/ea on March 6), but are stabilizing. Most rares have dropped in the range of 10-50+%, but are still volatile.

The trend for Ectos is a small negative slope, and I expect them to stabilize at about or slightly above 2750c/ea. Ignoring future changes that affect Ecto supply/demand, I see no reason that this new price point would change significantly beyond normal trade fluctuation.

For reference, Ectos previously had a stable price point at around 3900c from Feb. 2 to ~Feb. 18, when news of improved drop rates for Rares created a rush to sell. The real trauma hit on Feb. 27-28 (the 2 days after the patch; note that the patch was late on Feb. 26, so Feb. 27 was the first full day for people to experience the new drop rates), when there was a so-far-permanent drop of 500c/ea.

Looking at Etco’s since the start of the year it appears to me that they are just returning to the price they were at the start of January when they was 50k of them for sale on the market. They peaked in February when the supply dropped below 10K for several weeks. Now supply is back up over 30K.

I’m not sure, since I wasn’t paying attention to the TP forum until recently but it sounds like at some point players decided that Ectos were a “safe” currency to hold their wealth. Much like the “economy is going to tank, buy gold (actually gold coins so we can gouge you on collector’s price)” commercials I keep hearing on talk radio. Enough people believed it and started to hoard Ectos by breaking down every rare they got or crafted themselves. This may have also elevated the price of some rares as they were salvaged rather than sold on the market.

Now that rare/exotics are guaranteed (but only once a day) from a chest from any of the major events, the idea that ecto’s being a safe haven went out of the window and the price and supply is simply returning back to normal.

The TP doesn’t fabricate items.

If 1750 bags of skritt shinies get dumped onto the TP at the same time, it’s probably from a farming bot.

It’s important to consider the effects of announcements and patches on the game’s economy.

In 10 days from January 17 to January 27, the price increased dramatically (3000c to 3800c). Why?

January 16:

• Announcement that world transfers will end, and the introduction of guesting. Result is transfer en masse, increased focus on WvWvW to ‘boost’ servers (lookin’ at you, Kaineng), reduced focus on PvE.

January 17/18: transcript of Jan. 17 developer interview which announced:

• Removal of rez rushing in dungeons. Players could expect reduced ability to obtain rares/exotics as a result of harder and more time-consuming dungeons.

• General AoE ability nerf. Also reduces drops due to reducing players’ ability to ‘tag’ tons of enemies and become eligible loot from all of them, e.g. from Cursed Shore farm train.

• Misc. comments about rebalancing, increasing dungeon difficulty, adding or improving alternative routes to get gear (presumably that gear would not require Ectos as that route has already been explored extensively).

Dev announcements and patches have a very noticeable impact on TP prices, and the trend that begins when an announcement/patch is made tends to become stable until the next announcement/patch is made.

This isn’t an issue of ‘returning to a previous price’ because the reasons aren’t the same – that it is currently about the same price is not due to a return to past conditions, but the introduction of new conditions that have a similar effect as past conditions did. That’s an important distinction because it shows that the changes they make (and imply) do impact the TP in a significant way.

Also – I’d argue that the pre-Jan. 17 price point was majorly impacted by market oversaturation due to Wintersday events (esp. Snowflake exploit) and that the Feb. price of ~3900c was the ‘real’ value of Ectos prior to the most recent patch that significantly increased Ecto acquisition rates.