Guild Wars 2

I’ve been mulling over the hypothesis that our economy has been slowly but steadily gaining inflation. I call it a hypothesis because I don’t have any objective data to back it up, haha, though I’m sure it could be mined from gw2spidy or something.

As a quick rundown, a major cause of inflation is when the amount of currency in circulation increases faster than the amount of goods and services available. Gold and silver in this game represent buying power, but without goods such as fine crafting materials, orichalcum, omnomberry pies, precursors, etc. that buying power is actually meaningless.

So what are the major places that currency enters circulation? Heart Quests, Dynamic Events, Vendoring items, bags of coin, and dungeon rewards were the ones that I came up with. I feel that of those, dungeon rewards and dynamic events are probably the biggest factors, followed closely by vendoring items.

I was thinking, wouldn’t it be interesting if the 26s at the end of dungeon runs was actually instead a Rare item?

And while I’m sure it would be really unpopular, what if the item was downgraded to a green item if you repeat the exact same path within 30 minutes?

Anyways, not a serious suggestion, but as a thought experiment, I think this would be a significant way to reduce how much money is being “printed” and put into circulation.

Thoughts, ladies and gentlemen?

raise repair bills, raise teleporting costs, raise trading post taxes
→ deflation

however some may be so poor that the repair bills can be too much… :P

More money sinks are needed. First one should be a 10% tax on buying offers posted in TP from people that want to buy an item at X price.

if all bots were gotten rid off the economy would balance itself out better. People would earn more by selling, but ecto prices, crafting prices (with that crafted item prices) would all rise, creating a bigger gold sink right there.

is it really possible to have a perfectly balanced system? what do we do with the guys having 5k gold? how many people are poor so they can have that? do we go for socialism or capitalism? u dude are overthinking it.

best money sink=new skins

I think the issue lies in

1) the amount of money the average buyer has and is willing to spend per unit

2) the amount of market which is controlled by power buyers / sellers who have 0 consequence for cornering a market and simply sitting on their investment for extended periods of time.

So yes – changing the amount of money which is rewarded on dungeons would help for point 1 but not for point 2. To solve point 2 we can flood the market with materials and try to revamp the way the market works.

We need to revamp how power sellers / buyers can manipulate the market. I originally thought some kind of profit tax would be helpful – but that drives supply from TP – the goal here is to push more inventory onto the market while passively punishing those who aren’t tossing their stuffs on the market. I’d advocate that there should be a limited inflation price where you CAN’T put something on the market for more than 10% of the lowest listing for the past 24 hours – this way prices can go up IF demand makes it go up, not if speculators suddenly buy all the low sell orders and reprice high. I’d also advocating restricting the buy orders to 80% or even 50% of the lowest price for 24 hours to encourage more supply to sit on the market.

I personally think that if we do both, inflation would go away and things will be priced appropriately. Sure inflation would gradually creep but speculators would no longer have the ability to radically effect the market / abuse a no consequence system.

DanH.5879:

raise repair bills, raise teleporting costs, raise trading post taxes
-> deflation

however some may be so poor that the repair bills can be too much… :P

I don’t think that making money sinks bigger would be a good solution considering how most money sinks are already established at their current level. It would only cause outrage.

Additionally, I believe that making money sinks bigger is only attempting to treat the symptoms that happen when money printing gets out of hand, instead of actually regulating the printing of the money itself.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

is it really possible to have a perfectly balanced system?

I don’t think that this is an attempt to make a perfectly balanced system. This is a thought exercise that suggests it’s better for the economy if people are producing goods instead of printing money.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

what do we do with the guys having 5k gold?

This suggestion isn’t meant to “deal with” guys with 5k gold. Those people would have earned that money regardless of my suggestion because they most likely did their homework and had smart usage of the trading post.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

how many people are poor so they can have that?

I sympathize with people who have difficulties making ends meet, not only in game, but also in real life. However, being destitute in a (more or less) free market society is not a function of inflation but a measure of that individual’s resource allocation. How much time are they putting forth on doing something profitable vs. how much time they are doing something unprofitable.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

do we go for socialism or capitalism?

Both in their purest forms have advantages and drawbacks, and could be analyzed ad nauseum. However, that’s not the point of my post. Inflation is a problem that can affect both socialistic economies as well as capitalistic economies.

The point of my post is: I hypothesize that it’s healthier for the economy to be producing goods (rare items/ectoplasms) over printing money (26 silver).

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

u dude are overthinking it.

Maybe I am “overthinking” it. But I’m not looking to produce a “cure-all” which I think you seem to be under the impression that I’m talking about. Dude, I think you are over-thinking it.

if that were the case, I would just stop doing dungeons.

swiftpaw.6397:

if that were the case, I would just stop doing dungeons.

Interesting, may I ask why? Is it so much worse to be getting a rare from the end of a dungeon run instead of 26s?

I’m not saying you’d be wrong for doing so, I would just be interested in being enlightened on your opinion.

DigitalKirin.9714:

swiftpaw.6397:

if that were the case, I would just stop doing dungeons.

Interesting, may I ask why? Is it so much worse to be getting a rare from the end of a dungeon run instead of 26s?

I’m not saying you’d be wrong for doing so, I would just be interested in being enlightened on your opinion.

because market would be overflown by rares more than it is right now and their price would drop down from 19s to 5s making it even harder to make money.

Mirta.5029:

DigitalKirin.9714:

swiftpaw.6397:

if that were the case, I would just stop doing dungeons.

Interesting, may I ask why? Is it so much worse to be getting a rare from the end of a dungeon run instead of 26s?

I’m not saying you’d be wrong for doing so, I would just be interested in being enlightened on your opinion.

because market would be overflown by rares more than it is right now and their price would drop down from 19s to 5s making it even harder to make money.

Not only this, but I want a guaranteed reward for my time, not a chance at one. If I salvage that rare, there’s a chance I get nothing, there’s a chance I get something. I do not need dungeon tokens. If I sell it, the price fluctuates, and as said above, it will be worth less. I don’t do dungeons to gamble or play the trading post. I do them for a guaranteed reward.

Inflation doesn’t impact on dungeon and karma items. When you design your item rewards and end game around gold, inflation, RMT, power trading and gold farms rule the game. When you design your item rewards around content (karma rewards, dungeon tokens, badges of honour, boss specific drops) you reinforce the value of content over grind. Sure you can still “grind” content to access the account bound rewards (CoF p1 farms for dungeon tokens, karma chain farming, jumping puzzle badge farms, repeating dungeons for specific drops) but the content is far more diverse and specific to the rewards, reinforcing diversity of the content you play and rejuvenating the population of different elements of the game.

When so much of the game is ruled by gold, and most content boils down to gold rewards, it is inevitable that players will reduce all content to the fastest gold farms and favours those which creates a feeling that all other content is not rewarding. When rewards are unique to content (ie gold is not the primary means of chasing most exotic weapons, racial armours and legendaries, instead use account bound specific currency which has to be earned via content) players will disperse throughout the game chasing down the rewards they want based on the content which offers it rather than funnelling into the same dungeon paths over and over.

The problem isn’t that CoF or any dungeon offers gold, the problem is that gold is so important and needs to be used to access most of the end game aesthetic rewards. The current GW2 design strongly favour gold over content.

I think the issue lies in the available materials + money in the market where as swiftpaw sees ANY increase in worth by overall market value (materials + money) as bad. Currently supply of materials hasn’t dramatically changed (save for ectos) but from what we all see money is alot more available via dungeon runs. Swift and Pet’s commentary is that we can’t just balance one side while adding supply to the other.

Another issue is if we can avoid money / material sinks (a passive way to reduce market value) and instead address the issue directly. Simply put reducing the cash available will hurt buying power and deflate money itself, but that ISN’T enough. We need to make sure that by reducing the prevalence of money in the economy will indeed lower prices and deflate material cost. Sure people are less willing to buy at a certain price – but are sellers willing to sell at a lower price or can they continue to buy out supply and sit on what they have? Adding a rare at the end wouldn’t solve much – it could increase supply of materials but it is dangerous in that speculators would halt the deflation effect.

I am not in favor of replacing coin rewards with items valued only for their saleability. The proliferation of rares from meta events has devalued these items considerably. If you’re going to reduce dungeon rewards, just reduce the coin.

Be careful, though. The health of an MMO is maintained by keeping players interested in repeating content. Reduce or eliminate incentives and you risk reducing the player base. Imo, a larger, interested player base is more important to the game than reducing the amount of gold in circulation.

In any MMO, the supply of gold is always going to grow unless there are ways to remove gold from the system. Rather than reduce the amount of gold players can gain and perpetuate the feeling that it’s hard to gain gold in GW2, give players a reason to spend it.

I hate how the rarest skins in the game are gotten by being good at the market, not at the game.
So many things in this game are tied to menial grind or gold, so little is tied to difficult Achievements or genuine challenge.

Even WoW nowadays has rewards tied to Achievements.

Its not just the speculators who are causing this problem – its also due to gold inflation.

DigitalKirin.9714:

DanH.5879:

raise repair bills, raise teleporting costs, raise trading post taxes
-> deflation

however some may be so poor that the repair bills can be too much… :P

I don’t think that making money sinks bigger would be a good solution considering how most money sinks are already established at their current level. It would only cause outrage.

Additionally, I believe that making money sinks bigger is only attempting to treat the symptoms that happen when money printing gets out of hand, instead of actually regulating the printing of the money itself.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

is it really possible to have a perfectly balanced system?

I don’t think that this is an attempt to make a perfectly balanced system. This is a thought exercise that suggests it’s better for the economy if people are producing goods instead of printing money.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

what do we do with the guys having 5k gold?

This suggestion isn’t meant to “deal with” guys with 5k gold. Those people would have earned that money regardless of my suggestion because they most likely did their homework and had smart usage of the trading post.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

how many people are poor so they can have that?

I sympathize with people who have difficulties making ends meet, not only in game, but also in real life. However, being destitute in a (more or less) free market society is not a function of inflation but a measure of that individual’s resource allocation. How much time are they putting forth on doing something profitable vs. how much time they are doing something unprofitable.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

do we go for socialism or capitalism?

Both in their purest forms have advantages and drawbacks, and could be analyzed ad nauseum. However, that’s not the point of my post. Inflation is a problem that can affect both socialistic economies as well as capitalistic economies.

The point of my post is: I hypothesize that it’s healthier for the economy to be producing goods (rare items/ectoplasms) over printing money (26 silver).

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

u dude are overthinking it.

Maybe I am “overthinking” it. But I’m not looking to produce a “cure-all” which I think you seem to be under the impression that I’m talking about. Dude, I think you are over-thinking it.

you are talking about inflation. but it is not only about the perfect balance between new money and new items/services in game. it is also about the reallocation of resources. so if you want a perfectly balanced system without inflation, it would mean that people that have more money are actually taking away from other people. if i have more someone else is having less because there is finite amount of money in a system without any way to get new money in game. inflation is inevitable, and kinda good.

on the other hand i don’t thing it would be good to artificially deflate money be making it scarce by adding new item while removing a way of obtaining it.

gold sink=new skins is a way to get the excess of money from game.

sry for my english… this topic is a bit out of my league language vise.